The Philosophy of

Alfred
Rosenberg
JAMES B. WHISKER

TRADITION
 Contents

Introduction ...................................... ...1

The Roots of Christianity.......................... 25

The Gnostic Origins of Christianity......... 41

The Theological Background.................... 49

The Manichaean Heresy................... 59

The Cathars................................................ 71

Meister Eckhart......................................... 83

The Roman Catholic Church.......... ......... 103

The Nordic Christian Church.................... 135

Rosenberg and Nietzsche........................... 161

Scientific Racism................ 183

Race and Anti-race.................................. ..207

Art and Politics............................................225 .

Bibliography................................................ 243
 Introduction

Alfred Rosenberg was born in Reval [now Talinn],

Estonia, on 12 January 1893. His ancestors were German who
earned their living as merchants and artisans. In 1910 he
graduated from a polytechnical high school in Riga, Latvia.
During the First World war he was a student in Moscow,
studying art and architecture. He was a witness to the October
Revolution which brought the Bolsheviki to power in Russia.
He returned to Reval and by November 1918 he had moved to
Munich. Of the major National Socialist leaders who were of
age during the war, Rosenberg alone was not a soldier.
Rosenberg became friendly with leading racists of the
post war world. He knew the members of the Bayreuth Circle,
led then by Houston Stewart Chamberlain. The Circle was a
racist discussion group founded by Richard Wagner. Included
in the circle were Richard Wagner’s son, daughter, daughter-in-
law and widow. Dietrich Eckhardt was a welcome visitor and
probably was responsible for introducing both Rosenberg and
Hitler to the Circle. The principal work produced by the Circle
was Chamberlain’s Foundations of the Nineteenth Century.
Rosenberg planned his Myth of the Twentieth Century as a
sequel to Chamberlain’s book. Rosenberg expressed his
admiration for Chamberlain, and acknowledged National
Socialism’s debt to Chamberlain, in Houston Stewart
Chamberlain als VerkunderundBergrunder [Munich: Bruckmann,
1927].
Dietrich Eckhardt was probably responsible for
introducing Rosenberg to Adolf Hitler in the fall of 1919. They
formed a lasting friendship. Rosenberg probably introduced
Hitler to the document located in Russia, The Protocols of the
Learned Elders of Zion, a highly controversial pamphlet. It was
reportedly a master plan for Zionist domination of the world
through control of banking and commerce. Rosenberg first
2 Alfred Rosenberg

edited a German edition of The Protocols entitled Die Protokolle

der Weisen von Zion und die jiidische Weltpolitik [Munich:
Boppel, 1923]. He then built on the themes in two additional
works: Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten [Munich: Eher,
1937]; and Unmoral im Talmud [Munich: Central Press of the
NSDAP, 1943]. The same themes are used in The Myth of the
Twentieth Century.
Dietrich Eckhardt helped Rosenberg define, clarify and
sharpen his anti-semitism. Much of Rosenberg’s anti-Jewish
political and philosophical thought was the product of interplay
between Eckhardt and Rosenberg. Eckhardt also introduced
Rosenberg into the Thule Society, another major racist
discussion group. Rosenberg acknowledged his debt to Eckhardt
in Dietrich Eckhart: Ein Vermachtnis [Munich: Central Press of
the NSDAP, 1938],
In 1921, as Eckhardt’s health failed, Rosenberg took over
the editorship of the National Socialist newspaper Volkische
Beobachter. He remained the editor until 29 December 1937,
although Rosenberg’s role was substantially diminished by late
spring 1933. He also edited another National Socialist
publication, N.S. Monatshefte, which he had founded in 1929.
After the ill-fated Munich Beer Hal) Putsch of 9 November
1923, and after Hitler’s subsequent imprisonment, Rosenberg
led the Nazi Party. Following the election of 14 September
1930, Rosenberg served as a member of the Bundestag, the
German parliament. His committee assignment at this period
was foreign affairs. In 1933 Hitler appointed Rosenberg to head
the Nazi Party’s Office on Foreign Relations. He also served
the party as a member of the directorate on ideology and
education. On 24 January 1934 Hitler appointed him to be
Reich Leader for Total Intellectual Schooling.
Rosenberg was the only major National Socialist to have
considerable first hand knowledge of the east and of the Slavic
peoples. He had urged Hitler to invade Russia. On 17 July
 Introduction 3

1941, following the invasion of Russia, Hitler appointed

Rosenberg to be Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern
Territories. In 1942 Hitler gave Rosenberg full responsibility for
the political education and indoctrination of the German
people, with special responsibility for the armed forces.
There was much rivalry and competition within the
NSDAP. The two extremes were represented by Rosenberg on
the right and Dr. Paul Joseph Gobbels on the left. Many party
members called Gobbels "the red Nazi." He was anti-pluiocracy,
a term for the West usually associated with Marxist jargon. He
opposed traditionalism and thought of the cities as the future
seat of German civilization. Rosenberg was more opposed to
communism and more anti-Jewish than Gobbels, although
Gobbels picked up much of the latter rhetoric. Rosenberg loved
medieval pageants and costumes and anything he could
associate with the German folk-spirit. He disliked cities and
preferred a rural peasantry to an urban population. He believed
that country living was healthier and produced strong soldiers.
To accomplish his ends Rosenberg founded the Kampfbund fur
deutsche Kultur. Rosenberg’s appointments to posts dealing with
education, propaganda and education may be viewed as
victories over Gobbels.
Rosenberg was among the defendants at the first and
major Nurnberg War Crimes Trials. He was charged with a
wide variety of "war crimes," including war mongering and
atrocities against prisoners of war and civilians as leader for the
East. He was, of course, found guilty, and hanged on 16
October 1946. His body was cremated and his ashes dumped in
an unknown ditch.
Of the major National Socialist leaders, Alfred
Rosenberg was most interested in the religious revitalization of
the New Germany. This was to be accomplished by and through
the creation of a new German national church. Religion was a
vital component of the National Socialist state if only because
4 Alfred Rosenberg

it was an integral part of the Nordic heritage. The religious

rebirth Rosenberg envisioned would have been a second
reformation, for it would have included the wholesale alteration
of what Rosenberg called a corrupted dogma.
There are "positive" and "negative" religious sects within
Christendom. The positive denominations included Aryan
Christianity which were based on Nordic heritage. Negative
sects were those which were heavily based on Jewish history
and on the writings and codifications of Christ’s teaching by St.
Paul (Saul), a Hebrew convert. St. Paul was the personification
of "race-chaos" and the prostitute of the Aryan ideal. The
Pauline doctrines of love and charity and universalism were
entirely opposed to the values held by Aryan Christianity.
Rosenberg’s ideal state would not have to be coercive
because of the demands the German people will place upon its
leaders. Political power will emanate from the people, not from
the state. The state will be merely the political expression of the
people, but the true judgments about racial matters will be
made by the Aryan masses, not the German political machine.
The world envisioned by National Socialism never
materialized, not because the ideology was too weak or because
its predictions were imprecise, but because the state that
supported the ideology was aborted before it had truly come to
life. The ghosts remained for some time, but the plan was
forgotten. National Socialism was a counter-revolutionary
movement designed to clear out what it considered to be "alien
philosophies" of other races and peoples so that the indigenous
people could make its will felt. The counter-revolution was to
restore that which had existed as a dream of the Nordic racial
soul.
More of the future might be seen in Hermann Goering’s
Germany Reborn, although that work concentrated more on the
immediate future. Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century,
when it gazed into the future, looked at long range goals of the
 Introduction 5

state. Hitler’s Mein Kampf\ooked at bits and pieces of both the

immediate future and the longer range goals of the NSDAP.
Hitler was interested in the task of recreating and restoring
German national pride and identity and in attacking the Jews.
The new National Socialist state predicated citizenship
on race. Only racial Germans would be permitted to hold
German citizenship and nationality. This idea dates back at
least to Machiavelli’s idea of the nation-state. Ideally, the
population of any political entity would be comprised of
members of the same group. They would share common
religion, mores, folkways, customs and traditions. They would
be of common ancestry, race and ethnic origin. These would
comprise a mighty set of centripetal forces that would hold the
state together in times of crisis. Their political expression would
be the traditional nation-state which was much expounded in
the literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In
Rosenberg’s terminology this meant the racial state.
They way to assure continuance of the racial-nation-state
would be to nurture those elements which the racial-ethnic
group held in common. The cultural activities would be of Volk
Kultur [culture of the nation], the expression of the Volksgeist
(folk spirit). They would emphasize those ancient and more
modern folkways that the body-politic shared as an entity.
The Volk is unique because it has had experiences of
individual people. The people as a collective body has also had
experiences that it has undergone as a collective body. The
people as a collective has developed its own unique mores,
folkways, religion, customs, language, literature, myths and
traditions.
« * • 9 < t
We may summarize Alfred Rosenberg’s ideas as follows:
(1) The German racial soul, once a major factor in all
Germans’ constitutions, has been forgotten. The fermentation
6 Alfred Rosenberg

of the blood shed by German soldiers in World War I has

reawakened the German and reestablished the myth of blood.
(2) In Germany there are two groups competing for
power: the race and the anti-race. Jews were the greatest threat
to German civilization simply because the Jews are the alien
anti-race.
(3) The Catholic Church was also a threat to Germany
because it had introduced Jewish-Syrian-Roman ideas to
Germany. Catholicism taught a moral system of submission.
This morality is suitable for slaves and weaklings, but wholly
.unsuitable for proud Nordic men.
(4) The city was a threat to the virtues of the German
who was fundamentally a peasant. Cities harbored every
conceivable vice, which vices would never have been tolerated
in rural areas.
(5) Rural life was pure. The German racial soul can best
be reawakened in small towns and the countryside.
(6) The highest material expression of the racial soul is
found in art. Germany is permeated by alien art forms which
distract the Nordic racial soul.
(7) Germany needs living space for her people. Colonies
are unacceptable because they are inhabited by alien races.
Living space may be found in the old German empire and in
the East.
(8) Germany has no natural allies because it is a racial
state which seeks to explore only its own past and present. It
has no interest in alien cultures.
$$******
Alfred Rosenberg acknowledged many influences on his
thought. Most of those who exercised considerable influence on
Alfred Rosenberg’s thought were noted in his writings, notably
in his most significant work, The Myth of the Twentieth Century.
Frequently, Rosenberg acknowledged the most important
influences on his thought by devoting a whole chapter or a
 Introduction 7

section of the Myth to these persons. As his work became more

popular and as the Nazi Party came to power, Rosenberg chose
to extract parts of the Myth and to publish these with little
change as separate booklets. We may note the following as
having had significant influence on Rosenberg’s political and
social thought:
(1) The Manichaeans and the Cathars. Because
Rosenberg was so strongly anti-Roman Catholic he delighted in
extolling the virtues of any anti-Catholic movement of the past.
Moreover, those early anti-Catholic Christians whom Rosenberg
admired most also rejected the Jewish writings [Old Testament]
and influences [New Testament].
(2) Meister Eckhart. Rosenberg credited Eckhart with
having rediscovered the German racial soul. He also liked
Eckhart because the latter revolted against Roman Catholic
teachings.
(3) Arthur Schopenhauer. While Rosenberg disliked the
Oriental aspects of Schopenhauer’s thought, he was especially
attracted to Schopenhauer’s emphasis on the primacy of the
will.
(4) Friedrich Nietzsche. Rosenberg was attracted to
Nietzsche’s concept of the superman. He also liked the way
Nietzsche altered Schopenhauer’s concept of the will, making
into the will to power whereby the superman attains his destiny.
(5) Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Arthur, Count de
Gobineau. An English expatriate, Chamberlain moved to
Germany where he wrote the Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century. Rosenberg thought of his own Myth of the Twentieth
Century as the sequel to, and fulfillment of, Chamberlain’s
book. Arthur, Count de Gobineau was one of the last expositors
of aristocratic conservatism. His Essay on the Inequality of the
Human Races advocated permanent stratification [caste] of
society as well as racial separation. He espoused white
supremacy. Gobineau argued that only white and yellow
8 Alfred Rosenberg

races had ever produced civilization and that the yellow had
declined to a point that it was unlikely that it could do so again.
» * * » «
Rosenberg had a marked preference for rural life which
we have already explored to some degree. He saw cities as
corrupted, full of sin and vice. They lure young men off the
farms with the glow of neon lights and the promises of
forbidden liaisons. They offer a real diversion from the
repetitive routine of rural life. In their own way they are the
habitat of the Anti-Christ. They seduce the unsuspecting youth
and subdue the fragile folk soul. They more men away from
contemplation of the folk soul. They are the centers of trade
and the creations of Jewish investment capital.
Rosenberg’s future Germany would reemphasize the
values and the virtue production of rural living. Farm life would
be reconstituted and the farmer given a place of prominence in
the scheme of things. His contributions to the state would be
recognized and he would remain medieval and what is called
"alienation” in marxism would disappear. The politics of cultural
despair would be vanquished by a healthy dose of farm living.
Where there was insufficient farm land, an aggressive
German foreign policy would provide additional living space.
Here the German rural worker would preserve the precious
spark of the eternal, the human soul. The doctrine of living
space had been invented as a reasonable way to provide an
arena wherein the noble Aryan soul might flourish. The
alternative was the negation of the soul in the arena of the
devil, the city.
Rosenberg admired the caste structures of India and
other Asian nations and found a parallel in the German
aristocratic rule of many areas of Eastern Central Europe,
notably of the Teutons in Czechlands and Poland. There
remained an aristocracy, which, while permanently stationed
above the peasants of a different race below, were not wholly
 Introduction 9

separated from them. Yet they remained culturally and racially

aloof so that they were not absorbed by the indigenous
population. This aristocracy set standards of style and taste.
They uplifted the lifestyles of the other races by setting
standards of the racial culture. Without the Germanic influence,
in Rosenberg’s view, there would be only a slow and painful
decline of the non-German races. German rule guaranteed
renaissance.
Other races were incapable of producing great music, art
or drama on their own, but they could imitate and appreciate
these essential German products. The Nordic aristocracy
provided all other basic standards. The non-Germans, notably
the Slavs, could not become Volk for they lacked the Pb/fc-soul,
nor could they wholly partake of the Kultur, for that, again,
required membership in the Nordic race. The political-social
control the Nordic racial aristocracy provided gave great
benefits to all. Rosenberg’s plan was to reestablish the best of
this system of the past by depopulating areas of the East and
redistributing the lands among German settlers. The racial
Germans could imitate the rule that had existed thousands of
years before when Eastern Slavic populations brought in Nordic
rule by men known as Vikings, Varangians, Rus and other
names.
A typical resettlement of the East would involve
something about like the following. There would be a general
resettlement of most of those presently living on arable land. A
manor house would overlook the large farm. Peasants of other
races would live in smaller houses in nearby locations. Barns
and warehouses would house animals, supplies, machinery and
produce. Each farm would be essentially self-sufficient,
producing nearly everything required for the support of the
entire company. The farms would export agricultural surpluses
to the cities of Germany, and even overseas. The nation would
import only such basics as were required for a reasonable
10 Alfred Rosenberg

lifestyle: farm machinery, occasional foods not grown on that

farm and a few luxury goods. The relationship between the
German and non-German families would be based on the
Nordic honor code. It would surely not resemble a slave
system.
A vast network of autobahns, much like the American
interstate highway system, would link the principal cities of
Greater Germany and a system of secondary highways would
feed into the autobahns. This would enable Germans to use
private automobiles to go from the farms to the cities. A
modern rail transit system would move passengers and cargo
quickly. Cities could provide a wide variety of cultural benefits,
provided the cities were regulated so as to guarantee public
health, morality and -safety. Included in Rosenberg’s grand
design was a plan that would assure that no crops would spoil
in the fields because of inadequate transportation.
The real life of Germany would revolve around small
towns. Here, all of the traditional German festivals, fairs, trade
and companionship would take place. The towns would provide
the basics of life, such as shops where one could buy foods,
clothing and mechanical things. Conspicuous consumption and
conspicuous waste would be eliminated. The business of
Germany would not be predicated on predatory, competitive
capitalism wherein shoddy goods are peddled by advertising and
sales techniques. Only what was essential plus reasonable luxury
goods would be produced. To Rosenberg, waste and artificially
induced consumption were the natural bi-products of Jewish
plutocratic capitalism.
The towns would be much like medieval market places.
One would come to discuss issues and ideas and to trade. The
public forum would be a major part of the town. The best of
early Greek democracy was to be reestablished. The towns
would be small and an inhabitant or visitor from the nearby
countryside would probably know nearly all other citizens.
 Introduction 11

Rural life would permit the luxury of living in pure air

in a healthy, hard-working environment. Health care services
and the like would be available in the towns, but the general
health would be better because of the healthy environment.
Farms would be opened to the children of city-dwellers so that
they might benefit from the new world of outdoor life. Each
person would, thus, come to know, respect and honor the
farmer, the salt of the earth. The farmer was the only true
producer of the national wealth. In a sense, each person would
have been a farmer at least at one point in his life.
Unlike the ordinary vision of the future city, the view
Rosenberg offered maintained that farms, not cities, were the
most desirable place to live. Urban blight and all of its
attendant problems would be solved through a general moral
and social uplifting of the people which would be the natural
conclusion of the reawakening of the Nordic racial soul.
Rosenberg had the remedy for the evils of the cities: a strong
dose of Nordic racial Volk education and Kultur. The newly
reconstituted Nordic cities would be reduced in size. An object
of political power was not to concentrate, but to disperse,
populations. The city was viewed as a device to perform certain
essentials only. Cultural centers and industries would be
concentrated, but not to the degree they were in Rosenberg’s
time, in the cities. The cities would house those vital and
necessary bureaucracies, foreign embassies and like
governmental institutions that are inevitably present.
Urban transit systems would be of the most advanced
models. Parks and recreation facilities would abound. Attention
would be given to the aesthetic qualities of design and the
architecture of cities would be of an acceptable Volk type. Only
the very best of the past would be retained. In practical terms
this meant that those events and individuals which added to the
racial consciousness of the people and to the German myth
were worthy of recollection. Monuments to military victories
12 Alfred Rosenberg

and great heroes would decorate the parks and streets.

Cleanliness would be the key word.
The educational system would be totally revised. German
youths need only be taught those racially-based ideas and
histories that are related to the Volk soul. Alien history, to
Rosenberg, was ordinarily useless. Occasional exceptions to this
might be made on occasion for diplomatic personnel and a
perhaps for handful of others. Rosenberg placed great emphasis
on historical understanding. In his view one could not be a
great racist unless he knew history. The great tragedy of
traditional German historical education for Rosenberg was that
it tried to teach the nation’s youth too many histories instead of
concentrating on the history of the race. Just as it bothered
Rosenberg that Nordics appreciated foreign art, so it bothered
him that Germans often knew more of alien histories than they
knew of their own history. A case in point was the knowledge
of Greco-Roman mythology many Germans had to the neglect
of their own mythology.
Kultur is learned from the earliest age. It is a product of
historical understanding. At times one appreciates one’s own
culture more, and more easily rejects alien cultures, if he learns
at least a modicum of alien history and culture. Jewish history,
Rosenberg thought, might be taught more as a contrast to
Nordic culture and traditions than as a subject which might
stand on its own merit. The young might need to be reminded
of the dishonorable and alien souls of other races so that the
they are immunized against their ideas. But, in general, the
striving of the Germanic people for its own racial identity forms
the backbone of the social science and arts education.
Only native art forms are discussed, for these alone form
the soul, expose the inner most sentiments, of the German
people. Anything else moves the German away from his own
Kultur. Art is an expression of the racial soul. Nothing except
religion does more than art to reawaken and determine the
 Introduction 13

racial soul. Rosenberg considered himself to be a learned art

critic. He devoted a substantial portion of the Myth of the
Twentieth Century to a discussion of art and art forms. This
topic consumes more attention in the Myth than any other
subject, including racism.

Three major errors can be seen in modern German art

according to Rosenberg. First, Germans had become enamored
of foreign art. Japanese art is temperamentally, racially and
culturally suited to the Japanese, Rosenberg’s favored Oriental
[and generally non-white] racial group. But Japanese art is not
suited to the Nordic soul. One ought to respect Japanese art as
the expression of the Japanese racial soul. But no German
should collect it or decorate his home with it.
Second, modem art was utterly without any redeeming
social or artistic value according to Rosenberg. There was
nothing that provoked his anger and hatred more than modern
artistic expressions. He cared little for modern music, literature
or drama, but it was painting and related art that brought out
the worst in modernism. Its existence could not be justified even
for non-Aryan peoples. Abstraction and impressionism may be
singled out as being the worst of all artistic expressions, past or
contemporary.
Third, Jews had come to dominate the arts in Germany.
They had committed two grievous crimes. They had attempted
to pass off their own products as being truly artistically
meritorious and they had reduced art to a game of making
money. While admitting that many Jews were talented
performers in the musical area, Rosenberg denied that Jewish
composers, writers or artists had ever created anything of value,
even for the Jewish racial soul. Mostly, Rosenberg argued, Jews
had made a monetary issue of the arts. It was less important in
the plutocratic markets what the art had accomplished, or how
it had contributed to the racial unity and understanding of the
14 Alfred Rosenberg

race, than what money was to be made from publishing, selling

and distributing the items.
The new Germany would have strict control over the
arts. It is not nearly as simple as saying that art must depict a
politically acceptable theme. It did mean that art would have to
idealize the Nordic racial soul. It need not illustrate only ideal
beauty, but neither should it show the sordid and ugly side of
existence. It might never offend the race or denigrate it,
especially at the expense of another race. Cultural isolation
would follow. The German Kultur would not be permitted to
become contaminated by lesser art and cultural forms. There
would be no need for cultural exchanges for Germany’s culture
would appeal only to Germans. Alien products would not
appeal to the reconstructed German racial soul. German Kultur
would receive state support, both in economic terms and in the
general dedication a society affords its artists and writers.
Rosenberg saw the need for a strong Germany in the
foreseeable future. German power would have to be
maintained, for a racially conscious Germany would exist in a
hostile world, surrounded by jealous enemies, especially the
Jews. He expected that even some Nordic nations presumably
would remain in hostile hands. There was no hint of
redemption for the other civilized Western European nations.
Within the context of Rosenberg’s work one must
assume there is no agent of purgation that can wipe away the
sins of miscegenation and of allowing Jews to dominate
civilization. These people apparently cannot muster the will to
drive the foreign demon from their homes. For Rosenberg they
are beyond reclamation. Because they have allowed pollution
of the race, France and other Romanized nations cannot
partake of Volk~Kultur. A handful of overseas Germans might
rejoin the fatherland.
Rosenberg argued that the Jews and their allies might try
to overthrow the new order in Germany and reestablish the
 Introduction 15

Jewish ideas that they had tried unsuccessfully to superimpose

on Germans for two thousand years before the victory of
National Socialism. In his book on the international Jewish
conspiracy Rosenberg accused the Jews of following the plan
revealed in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
Rosenberg dwelled on this theme in several of his books. Die
Protokolle der Weisen von Zion und die jiidische Wellpolitik
[Munich, 1923] was Rosenberg’s first successful book. It served
to introduce a German audience, already well prepared to
accept almost any anti-Jewish literature or argument, to the
Protocols. He repeated the expose in parts of the Myth of the
Twentieth Century, Der Staatsfeindliche Zionistnus and Die Spur
des Juden in Wandel der Zeiten.
Rosenberg used a different line of attack in Unmoral im
Talmud in which he chose to show, by selecting certain portions
of the parts of the Jewish holy book, The Talmud, that it was
both anti-Christian and anti-gentile. Moreover, Rosenberg
argued, it permitted Jews to lie, cheat and steal in their
relations with Gentile society.
There is no genuine alliance that is truly possible for the
New Germany. There is only the tenuous possibility of a
temporary alliance of expediency based on power politics
because there is no other racially-related state. The temporary
alliance with Japan could be justified on the ground that Japan
had created a racially select and conscious state. Following Dr.
General Karl Haushofer, he was willing to allow Japan to have
a permanent sphere of influence in all of Asia. Germany had no
interest in colonies in the West, let alone in Asia, so there was
nd sacrifice in ceding all of Asia to Japan. But there could be
no permanence to a German-Japanese alliance because the
Japanese were not Nordic types.
Had Rosenberg adopted Houston Chamberlain’s ideas
of the Aryan race far different conclusions would have been
possible. The Aryan was not a single, real race for Chamberlain.
16 Alfred Rosenberg

He allowed that many superior races could exist, all of which

were "Aryan." The commonalty of type-forming racial groups
could bring otherwise disparate powers together. Aryans need
not have common racial features, color of hair, color of eyes,
and like superficial characteristics. They need be only superior
racial types. It would be in the common interests of all Aryan
powers, from Chamberlain’s perspective, to guarantee the
continued existence of all Aryan-dominated states.
None of this follows in Rosenberg’s thought simply
because he rejected Chamberlain’s view. That negates the
possibility of any other civilization having or being able to
produce type-forming Volk-Kultur or Pb/fc-souls. Rosenberg may
admire other cultures from afar, but in the final analysis he
really does not care anything about them. His philosophy was
created only for his special Nordic racial types and no one else.
The theme to which Rosenberg constantly returns is that
Germany alone has honor as its supreme value. This is a
domestic virtue and need not be applied to the dishonorable
world of international politics. Power politics of a Machiavellian
type is the only basis for relationships with other states.
Germany could freely practice autolimitation with any and all
treaty arrangements. It had experience this with Italy in World
War I. The Italians ignored the treaty they had made had prior
to World War I with Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Rosenberg’s New Germany would have to be so strong
that it could, on its own and by itself, defeat any alliance among
the Jewish, capitalist or marxist states. Rosenberg wished to
create a state which, by its very existence, would threaten world
Judaism, along with any ideologies (capitalism, plutocracy,
marxism, socialism) it controlled or dominated.
Rosenberg viewed Judaism as a never ending threat, a
dagger poised to strike at any moment. Germany must become
an armed camp. Its paramilitary system would have to augment
a strong and technologically advanced military. New weapons
 Introduction 17

systems and defensive postures would have to be developed

constantly. The Nordic soul of the past lived in a warrior.
Racially conscious Germany of the future would revive the
warrior mentality. The true Nordic man was prepared to defend
his turf to the last drop of his blood. The myth of blood, reborn
in the first world war, would make the new German into the
mighty defender of his racial values.
Excepting the conceivable, but improbable, need for
additional living space, after the initial growth of Germany in
the East, there would be no need for a German offensive
posture in the future. Once Germany had acquired its living
space in the East, it would have a basically established
population. It would require no additional space.
There is one other category of offensive war, known as
the "pre-emptive strike" wherein one accuses one or more of his
neighbors of planning an invasion and strikes first. That type of
action requires an offensive capability. Because of the duplicity
of her neighbors, Germany would have to be prepared in all
ways of war making, including the pre-emptive strike.
The German youth would be taught the values of
heroism and devotion to duty. The blood of the men killed in
World War I, through its fermentation, created the myth of the
twentieth century. It would be augmented by the blood myth of
duty and honor. Germans would be dedicated to service, even
to the sacrifice of one’s own life. The highest duty of the
German was the protection of his racial Volk. A Germany
surrounded by a ring of racially, culturally, theologically and
normally alien peoples, would grow in the great racial values.
Young people would be morally impelled to accept the
resurrected racial values because they could see an immediate
need and application for these values.
Rosenberg argued that the basic law of the German
nation will have been rewritten so that legal values can be
transvaluated. In the New Germany the greatest crimes will be
18 Alfred Rosenberg

anti-racial crimes. Such crimes, in one way or another,

jeopardize the continued purity and existence of the Nordic
race. Such crimes could never be expiated. Miscegenation of
any type would be outlawed and these rules would be strictly
enforced. Rosenberg argued that dishonorable peoples, notably
the Jews, could be controlled only by intense applications of the
law. Those Jews permitted to remain within the Reich would be
subjected to an intensive code of behavior. Anti-state and anti-
Kultur crimes would rank high in the list of criminal offenses to
be regulated by law. Conversely, inter-personal crimes would be
treated less severely.
Crimes against morality would largely be dealt with
through proper moral education in the Nordic Christian Church
and in the schools. The occasions of immorality would be
reduced as houses of prostitution and dens of homosexuality
would be closed permanently. The urban blight that affords
occasion for red light districts and communities of degenerates
would be demolished. Work camps for the reeducation of
irresponsible citizens would be maintained.
Trade would be placed on a strict honor code. The
shoddy merchandise that had been marketed by high-powered
advertising would disappear. Factories would have to follow a
strict code of quality. The policies followed by materialistically
oriented merchants would soon disappear. What Rosenberg
called the "Jewish mentality" would also disappear. More
equitable barter would be used in lieu of ordinary plutocratic
trade. Usury would be recognized as a crime against the race.
That wretched practice, Rosenberg argued, flowed from Jewish
domination of trade. Once that domination was ended unethical
business and banking practices would come to an end.
Research and archaeology would be encouraged, but
only in Nordic racial history. There remained research in
Nordic history that had not yet been undertaken sufficient to
occupy Germans over many generations. Adequate research in
 Introduction 19

German and Nordic cultures could be of immense value to

German religion, culture and education, and thus it is fully
justified. Few states would ever offer the Nordic historian
greater opportunity to utilize his skills or to have an impact on
the present and the future than the racially conscious New
Germany.
There would be no reason for Germans to study other
races. Through such study the Germans might become culturally
removed from their own race. Any research that Germans
might undertake in the pre-history or history of other races
would be of no consequence to Germans. While it might be of
interest to some to see what was looted from the tomb of a
long-dead Egyptian pharaoh, such research has no real impact
on any living society. The present-day Egyptians, even if they
were to be shown to be racially related to the builders of
pyramids, could not use that knowledge in any meaningful way
because they are not racially conscious. The excavation of any
prehistoric, even historic, site in South America has no impact
on any civilization for the makers of these monuments have
long since died off.
But in Germany it would have been an entirely different
matter. The discovery and interpretation of an ancient Aryan
symbol would have impact for the Nordic Christian Church. The
excavation of an Aryan site would aid the present-day Germans
in understanding their racial souls. The discovery of written
records of a Nordic tribe adds to the myth of the people. Each
finding will have an impact on the race, for the past has
determined the present and the future. The Nordic race lives in
the contemporary German racial national. He needs to
comprehend his past so he knows his being and can thus better
operate in the present. The German of Rosenberg’s future state
is a better man because he knows--rediscovers--more of his
being almost daily. The man who knows himself through his
20 Alfred Rosenberg

racial history is a higher being than one who is less conscious

of his true being.
$ * $ # #
Religion was a vital component of the National Socialist
state if only because it was an integral part of the Nordic
heritage. The religious rebirth Rosenberg envisioned was
tantamount to a second reformation, for it included the
wholesale alteration of a corrupted dogma.
There are "positive" and "negative" religions within
Christendom. The positive aspects included Aryan Christianity
and nordic heritages. Negative aspects included Jewish history
and the writings and codifications of Christ’s teaching by St.
Paul (Saul), a Hebrew convert. Saint Paul was the
personification of "race-chaos" and the prostitute of the Aryan
ideal. The Pauline doctrines of love and honor were entirely
different from those of Aryan Christianity.
If Christianity was to be made acceptable to the National
Socialists it had to be stripped of its Jewish elements. This idea
antedates Rosenberg by centuries. Rosenberg discovered the
Volk elements of German national Christianity as early as
Meister Eckhart (1260-1327) and found reinforcement in the
nationalistic writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and
Paul LeGarde (1827-1891). Rosenberg saw himself as the tool
for the fulfillment of a centuries old dream of German
theologians and philosophers.
Rosenberg presented Saint Paul as a legalistic thinker
concerned primarily with creating a new law for the Hebrew
people to take the place of the Mosaic law. Paul’s efforts are
thus those of first apostle and prophet of a new system of law.
While Moses received the law from God, and the law was
viewed as God’s handiwork, the fact that it had been offered
through Moses gave Moses a kind of secular salvation. Jehovah
created Moses as Hero. All who obeyed lav/ were accepting
Moses as well as Jehovah. The law given Moses is remembered
 Introduction 21

as the Mosaic Code, more than as the code of Jehovah. The

beauty of the message of God was to be found in its simplicity
and its morality.
The role of the two Hebrews, Moses and Saint Paul, was
that of codifier of the law. This codification was tantamount to
■he prostitution of the message. What Moses had done to the
law of the Old Testament, Saint Paul was to do to the new law
of the New Testament.
The Roman mind, and the Jewish mind, sought legal
formalities where none were needed and where none could do
more than obscure the message. The Jew thus became not the
prophet of the law, but the destroyer of the law. The law which
Rosenberg was willing to accept was that which could be
written romantically in the hearts of men, not in a formal and
useless legal way. The law as written by the two Hebrew
prophets was cold and formalistic and sought universal
dimensions. The law sought by Rosenberg would be informal
and applied as a necessary part of the Volk soul.
Although wholly accepting Luther as a Volk hero,
Rosenberg rejected the bases of Lutheranism. Luther had
discovered the message of justification by reading through Saint
Paul. The Lutheran Paul was one who was anything but the
formalist, the law-maker.
Rosenberg had little difficulty in discovering anti-semitic
elements in Luther. Paul had found it necessary to accept some
of the Christian elements taught and formulated by non-Jews,
such as justification by faith alone, while adding his own rigid
formalism to the law.
Saint Paul had been a necessary part of the Jewish
corruption of Christianity. In Rosenberg’s reconstruction of the
early days of the Christian church, the Jews had found it quite
necessary to subvert the new doctrine from within, having failed
to eradicate it completely from without. The crucifixion of
Christ had not ended Christianity. It had given the new Nordic
22 Alfred Rosenberg

sect a martyr and an incentive to grow and expand. The ideas

of Christ were a danger to the Hebrews and their tightly-knit
control over the peoples of the area.
Having failed to prevent Christianity from growing, the
remaining alternative was to capture and Judaize it. This was
Saint Paul’s mission. Saul was a persecutor of Christians, but he
failed in his mission of destruction. He then converted and used
Jewish legalism to undermine its principal, non-Jewish
teachings. He created a bureaucratic hierarchy and a set of
rules and modes of conduct which were essentially Jewish.
If Christianity became a Jewish sect, there would be little
outside interference with its relations with the Jewish dependent
government. The crucifixion of Christ would appear to have
been merely an internal matter within Judaism, and not a
matter of competition between Jewish and non-Jewish
teachings.
Christianity could be used to subvert Rome in a way not
possible with the traditional religious practices of the Hebrews.
Christianity already offered a universalist outlook, one that
could encompass all of the many nations of the Roman Empire.
Still, it would have a Jewish legal basis and Hebrew control.
Rosenberg saw Christianity, as developed by Saint Paul, as an
active agent pursuing the fall of the empire. The destruction of
Roman Power could foreshadow the re-emergence of the
independent Jewish state in Palestine.
In the complicated conspiracy in which Saint Paul was
either an active agent or sacrificial goat, the earth-centered Jew
was acting as conspirator, according to Rosenberg. This was the
first of many times the Jew would be made to appear as the
manipulator of nations irrespective of the consequences that
manipulation might have on other nations and peoples.
The Jewish religious conspiracy, as seen by Rosenberg,
offered a universalist philosophy of mankind, via Christianity,
for the non-Jewish people of the world, while, at the same time,
 Introduction 23

retaining a non-catholic view of the Jewish nation. Judaism thus

sought to destroy the nationalistic spirit of the Gentile nations
while strengthening its own position as a unique people
possessed of special characteristics and a special relation to
their own god. Jews placed Jehovah in a unique position among
all gods. He was the single deity, to the exclusion of all other
gods, yet He was concerned only with the fate of the Jews. He
was willing, especially in the Old Testament, to destroy non­
Jews in order to provide homelands and other material things,
while denying himself to them. The non-Jew was in a hopeless
position. He could not become a Jew, and he could not find the
true God without being Jewish.
Thus, Rosenberg, following German-Protestant
nationalistic theologians of the 18th and 19th centuries,
concluded that Christianity could be made acceptable to nordic
peoples only by removing the Old Testament from the basic
book of worship. The Old Testament was nothing more than a
highly nationalistic history of the Hebrew peoples cast against
a religious background. The Hebrews, as Rosenberg saw them
in the Old Testament, had accomplished absolutely nothing in,
of or by themselves. They were parasites who relied on Jehovah
to kill off other peoples and provide them with a homeland. All
they had their god had goven them.
Their holocausts against non-Jewish peoples had been
justified by relating the events to the will of God. Their
extermination of the peoples inhabiting the Promised Land was
the work of the Lord of Hosts. This was realistic and moral
because it was backed by the will of Jehovah. All secular events,
especially wars of aggression, were designed by God. To
suggest that such actions were morally wrong involved
questioning the will and purposes of the single deity.
It was this tradition that prompted Rosenberg’s attacks
on the Old Testament. Rejecting the notion that Christianity
could somehow make the Old Testament acceptable to a
24 Alfred Rosenberg

restored Aryan Christianity, he merely did the simplest thing:

he removed the Old Testament from consideration.
* $ $ $ >5? $

Rosenberg’s new religion would be a German national

religion. It would not make universal appeals to non-Germans,
nor would it see the brotherhood of man as a reality. It would
be very much a part of an entire movement, encompassing all
aspects of German life. Non-Germans would not understand it
for it would be based wholly in the German racial-blood-Volk
experience.
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) had seen the
varieties of mankind as a blessing. The races (nationalities)
were as many varieties of plants in a flower garden. Each was
unique and each had its beautiful points and each had its ugly
ones. Each had its own unique aroma and essence. Like most
super-nationalists, Herder was not prepared to condemn
members of other groups. What he saw were the virtues of his
own species.
The religion that Aryans possessed had to be able to
match their racial accomplishments. It had to emphasize the
racial qualities that had been developed within the Germanic
peoples. It had to be willing to extol the race-virtues they had
developed. The church had to be prepared to even condemn
whole races, notably the Jews.
Just as the individual may awaken to his destiny, so also
may the entire race reawaken. The mythical experience of the
mystical event, World War I, is the event that Rosenberg
believed would cause Germany to be reborn. This myth would
touch the soul of all Nordic men and bring them to full racial
consciousness. That myth will combine with the other
metaphysically true myths out of the Nordic racial past and
determine the race to become what is presently only its
potential.
 The Roots of Christianity

Rosenberg believed that many of the traditional beliefs

found among many Christians had Jewish roots. Traditional
Christian theology had failed to remove these elements of the
Hebrews from their beliefs. Jewish and Romanized Christianity
had retained a basic and irrational belief in Jewish myths and
superstitions that ante-dated Moses.
These irrational elements were not to be found in Nordic
races and their native religions. They would not have been a
part of Nordic Christianity had the Jew, Saul, not brought them
with him. Rosenberg argued that Christ was, after all, of Aryan,
not Hebrew stock.
Early on in the Myth of the Twentieth Century Rosenberg
provides his explanation of the racial origins of those peoples
living in Galilee about the end of the first century, B.C. They
were the descendants of Amorites, an Aryan people who came
to the area circa 700, B. C. By 100, B.C. the Jews had
established hegemony over the "Gentile district" of Galilee.
Joseph returned to Bethlehem, the city of his forebearers, not
as the sons of David, but as Gentile exiles expelled by the Jews.
Jesus had many traits, but those best suited to his alleged
Hebrew ancestry were stressed by traditional Christianity, but
only because of Saint Paul’s influence. Rosenberg believed that
the texts of the New Testament had been altered by Saint Paul
and his Jewish cohorts, especially as related to the ancestry of
Jesus and to his teachings. The New Testament gave Jesus a
Jewish lineage and gave his teachings a distinctly Jewish flavor.
Had the true teachings and ancestry not been open to dispute
at that time Saul would not have had to go to such great
lengths to establish the vital connection between Jesus and
Judaism.
As Rosenberg read the texts of the New Testament
carefully he found hidden bits, disguised because of the Jewish
persecution of those who denied Christ’s Jewish connections.
26 Alfred Rosenberg

These materials suggested to Rosenberg that the Gentile writers

knew better. It served the interests of the Roman and Judaized
church to show Christ and his message as the ultimate forms of
humility and submission. Still, here and there, he said, one finds
a strong inner will, a strength and nobility of character, a
brusque and harsh nature that reveal his real identity. We see
that in Christ’s chastisement of the money changers and
peddlers in the temple. "My house be called a house of prayer,
but ye have made it a den of thieves." [Matthew 21:13].
Saint Paul and his fellow "converts" [whom Rosenberg
regards as spies and traitors] had added the bits of Jewish
superstition to the Aryan message of Jesus. They had Christ
casting out devils and placing unholy spirits in animals. They
had Christ involved in Jewish ceremonies, performing tricks
there for the amusement of guests, as the wedding feast at
Cana. [John 2:1-11].
Rosenberg saw in Paul a conclusive hypocrisy, in that
Paul denied the traditional Hebrew Law, yet paid great
attention to the development of the same kind of Law for
Christians. He had seemingly rejected the Mosaic Code under
as being too legalistic and binding, but had attempted to codify
a Law for Christians which, Rosenberg said, was merely the
Mosaic Code under a new name.
To Rosenberg, Paul was the grand conspirator. Seeing
that the new religion of Christ could not be defeated, that it
threatened Judaism, the Jews sent Paul to transform it. Because
the New Testament blamed the Jews for the death of Christ
("His blood be upon us..." Matthew 27:25) it would or at least
could take on an anti-Jewish character. So the Jews decided,
according to Rosenberg, to send one of their own, in effect
sacrificing him, to redirect Christianity. It was this simple:
Christ had come unto his own, and his own received him not
[John 1:11]. The Jews were thus outcast. But by redirecting
Christianity, Paul made it seem that the Jews were not outcasts.
 The Roots of Christianity 27

Rosenberg reasoned that the Jews were the

quintessential example of racial bigotry and intolerance of other
peoples. They had created a god out of their own prejudice and
bigotry. When they came to Jehovah they found Jehovah to be
an omnipotent, jealous, dogmatic, inflexible taskmaster who
demanded that the Jews become his slaves. [Die Spur, p.93].
The Jewish will to power through control of money and
commerce was caused in large by the feeling of servility they
felt toward their Jehovah. Jewish character was fatally flawed.
They demanded power, but did not understand it. They had
power, but were unrestrained by any ethical standards,
especially in their dealings with Gentiles. Their national god
Jehovah treated nearly all non-believers as less than human.
^Psalms 110:1; see also, Matthew 22:44; Mark 12:36; Hebrew
1:13 and Acts 2:35]. He took their land and possessions freely
for his Chosen People and said that such action was godly.
[Genesis 17:8]. He demanded absolute obedience, [see 1
Samuel 6:19 and 1 Chronicles 13:9].
Saint Mark and, to a degree, Saint Matthew take a more
Nordic approach to man and God. Human beings are noble and
have a right to dignity and respect. Their writings respect the
honor and nobility of humankind.
Saint John’s Gospel also rejects traditional Hebrew
values. John begins with a non-Jewish polarity of good and evil.
'Phis derives from John’s Greek, not Hebrew, background. John
provides a basis for the rejection of the idea that God had
made both good and evil. It also provides a basis for criticizing
the god of the Jews who destroyed what he had made and had
shown anger toward men.
In Mark we find a Jesus who rejects the idea that he was
the Jewish Messiah, forbidding his followers to speak of such
things. It appears in Mark (8:29) that Jesus is not even clear
what his disciples are talking about when they ask him if he is
the "promised one." Jesus also cautioned his followers early in
28 Alfred Rosenberg

the gospels to avoid the Gentiles, and even the heterodox

Jewish Samaritans. [Matthew 10:5], After his home town and
the Jews generally rejected Him, Jesus took his mission
elsewhere. [John 1:11].
Rosenberg characterized the Jewish Jehovah as a
swindler, a promoter of lies, and a murderer. He especially
points to the stories of Abraham and Sarah, and how Abraham
passed Sarah off as his sister at the court of the pharaoh.
[Genesis 20:2]. He accused Abraham of prostituting her and
then profiting from her shame.
Jews and the Roman Church violated Jewish-Christian
doctrine of humility when it became an impediment to world
conquest and domination. God had ordained, as Rosenberg
interpreted Paul, that the Jews should inherit the earth and
control an earthly kingdom from Jerusalem. Since they had not
the power to do this on their own they had to seek allies. By
creating a cognate religion, Christianity, they could enlist
volunteers for their mission without having to invite Gentiles
into the elitist Judaism. Saint Paul shows that God had favored
the Jews above all other peoples (Romans 3). Christ ordained
that the Jews should govern, through Christ, from Jerusalem
(Ephesians 1:21) and that those who believed in him could
govern the world (I Cor. 6; 2-3). These earthly goals were
typical of Judaism, not pure Christianity.
Jesus was a revolutionary only in the racial ideas
Rosenberg believes are implicit in the true Christianity. Saint
Paul on the other hand is revolutionary in that he wanted to
unite the poorer classes and overthrow the Roman Empire (I
Cor 1:1: 6: 2-3; Ephesians 1:21). This was merely a form of
Jewish subversion of the poor Gentiles for Jewish ends. Saint
Paul never intended to permit Gentile participation in the
restored Jewish state, Rosenberg concluded.
When the Jewish kingdom was restored the Christians
would be taught obedience to the Jewish elite. This is why the
 The Roots of Christianity 29

Pauline doctrine of submission to authority is so important and

why it is stressed so heavily. In the new kingdom-of-god-on-
earth Jewish authority had to be made supreme over all non­
Jews. If the New Testament placed much emphasis on
individuality, freedom, liberty, individuality and peace, then the
Christian slaves of the New Jerusalem might rebel. Rosenberg
looked at the Sermon on the Mount as a Jewish invention. Jews
placed this in the bible to distort its true message and to
encourage submissiveness. Rosenberg condemned the
’effeminate extravagances" of that message. This is a mere
prostitution of the idea that the true kingdom of heaven is
within us. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, p. 607].
We must resist evil, Rosenberg argued. Nordic
Christianity must reject the subversion of the German state. It
must take up arms against evil. Only the cowardly races would
rather suffer evil than fight it. If one removes the message of
‘cowardly" writings, like the Sermon on the Mount, one finds in
Christ’s message the requirement that men must fight evil in
order to be saved. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, pp. 134-35
and 140-41],
Rosenberg acknowledged that Jesus taught a message of
love. If that love is properly defined it can become the source
of much strength in the revitalized Christianity. True love is
based on a pride of self, character and race. Those of the
superior race may love, in a condescending way, those of
inferior races, much as a master may truly love his pet.
Love is based on the recognition of inner value. If one
dislikes or rejects what he is then he cannot love himself. One
who does not love himself cannot love others. One must accept
his self for what it is. In recognizing that the Aryan race is
superior, one comes to a self-satisfying love. This love leads one
to love of country, race and God. To deny the love one feels for
his homeland and his race is to deny that portion of God’s
creation which involves us personally. If God had not intended
30 Alfred Rosenberg

his message to be of love he would not have allowed the love

of race and nation to enter the pure hearts of the believers.
[Myth of the Twentieth Century, p.159].
Rosenberg places the highest values on nation, race and
state. It is noble to love one’s neighbors, but the love of the
nation is of a higher order. It is reasonable to love one’s family,
but one must understand that the family derives its value by
virtue of its membership in the nation and race. Love of nation
and race are the overriding values.
From its Jewish beginnings the church misplaced its
emphases. It sought to combat evils in the world, but it chose
to fight against the wrong ones. It turned on itself, combatting
heresy within the church, when it ought to have expended its
energies in combatting its external foes. The inferior races
should have been made to submit to the superior races.
The Nordic state should have eradicated decadent Jewish
customs. Racial pride should have curbed the excesses of
"oriental" Roman. The powers of the church should have been
brought to bear on the creation of racial cohesion among Aryan
peoples. The church values should have been based on, and
integrated, with Teutonic heritages. [Myth of the Twentieth
Century, p. 67].
The key to understanding Nordic Christianity is found in
the doctrine of the "eternal personality." Each race has within
it a unique and immutable personality, a set of traits expressing
the racial values of the group. No one set is like any other set.
Nordic personality is superior to all others. It cherishes certain
ideals and rejects the ideals of other races. Christianity failed
the Teutonic peoples precisely because it was given Jewish
values, and because St. Paul had attempted to fabricate an
artificial bond between Christian teachings and Jewish
personality and values. If one would strip Christianity of its
Hebrew associations he would find a set of Aryan values that
would be compatible with his Nordic heritage. This is the job
 The Roots of Christianity 31

Rosenberg outlined for Nordic theology.

Within the "eternal personality" there are many
individualized expressions, the personalities of each man and
A'oman who are members of the race. The basic pattern is set
by virtue of being a member of, and participation in, the racial
group. The individual expression of each person within those
general guidelines is what accounts for human individuality.
A religion may prostitute the meaning of race and
destroy its racial values. This is precisely what Rosenberg
accused Christianity of having done. Its bases are Jewish, and
Jewish traditions are alien to Aryan peoples. Had Christianity
retained its Aryan bases, those Rosenberg claimed were based
on the true teachings of Jesus, all would have been well.
Instead, Christianity became dominated by Pauline teachings.
It repudiated its Aryan heritage and became a divisive element
which alienated the Aryan from his racial heritage. If one
purified the Christian doctrine and returned to the true message
of Christ one would find that Christianity was quite compatible
with Aryan racial consciousness. The two, Aryan eternal
personality and Christian dogma, would become mutually
reenforcing ideas. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, pp.7ff].
Germanic man is, by nature, free, brutal, self-assertive,
egoistic, powerful, decisive and hardened. The Jewish-based
Roman Church taught values which were wholly antithetical to
Aryan racial characteristics. Jewish-Roman Christian emphasis
on submissiveness weakened and destroyed the strong Nordic
animal. Its emphasis on rewards in heaven and long suffering on
each were Jewish characteristics, not Aryan. Humility reduces
the strong Aryan personality. Penance for sins brings
humiliation to the superior beings. [Myth of the Twentieth
Century, p.204].
The doctrines of fallen man do not apply to the Aryan
world view. Man can be kept in servility by stressing the
doctrines of sin and original sin. The Roman Catholic Church
32 Alfred Rosenberg

was tied to the doctrine of original sin. When the Reformation

came, Martin Luther and John Calvin failed miserably to root
out this Hither-Asiatic teaching. All the churches emphasized
magic rituals to remove original sin from man and to restore
man to his proper relationship to his God-given eternal
personality. By placing emphasis on the inability of man to save
himself, man is handed over to the caprice of God. Fear
becomes the strongest motivating force instead of race and
knowledge of the eternal racial soul. Man becomes defensive
and unsure of self. All of these combine to place Aryan man in
a constant state of submissive dependence.
Saint Paul found a protector and defender in a most
unlikely place, in North Africa. This defense of Pauline
Christianity came none too early for the Jewish-Roman
Christianity was under severe attack from those Nordic peoples
who had either remained in the Empire or had come into that
area from their Northern homelands late in Roman history.
They practiced what Rosenberg called the "Wotan Cult" but
were moved to accept a Nordic version of Christianity. Saint
Augustine (354-430) who may have been of black African
descent gave Pauline Christianity a complex theology. Saint
Augustine had been a Manichaean cosmic dualist in his younger
years, but became a Christian convert in middle age. His
thought remained captive of Manichaeanism long after his
conversion. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, pp.l2ff],
Rosenberg believed that just as the walls of Rome could
not withstand their armies neither could Pauline Christianity
withstand their assault on Jewish-Asian Christianity. But the
disrupting figure of Saint Augustine appeared and Pauline
beliefs were redeemed.
The Nordic-Aryan peoples had developed strong racial
beliefs which had become manifest in two great figures:
Zarathustra and Mani. Zarathustra had created an absolute
dichotomy between good (Ahura-Mazda, "The Wise Lord") and
 The Roots of Christianity 33

. 41 (Druj, "the Lie"). The world was full of daevas, the

orshippers of,evil. One must either stand with the Wise Lord
v fall with the Evil One. There will be a final battle in which
_ood will conquer evil and a final judgment in which the good
*‘ill be saved. The souls of good men, initiates to the cause of
Mazda, will weigh out because they have shown the positive
•irtues, most notably the supreme value of honor. Only those
*ho have acted with truth and honor can cross the bridge
’Chinvat") to Mazda’s paradise.
As the Aryan influence in Persia waned a Hither-Asiatic
class, Semites related to, or identical with, the Hebrews, the
Magi, took over the priesthood of the Zoroastrian religion.
They altered it, adding myths and magic spells to it. From their
name, Magi, comes our term magic. What they offered was not
revelation or true religion, but secular tricks, that is, magic.
These Magi added polytheism, angels, demons and the like, and
made Zoroastrianism into a ritualistic cult replete with potions
and spells. This could not have happened had Zoroastrianism
remained in Aryan hands, but the interaction with the Hebrews
during the Babylonian Captivity and Persian rule over Israel
brought. about evil changes in the theology. [Myth of the
Twentieth Century, p.81].
In orthodox Jewish and Christian studies there is a
strong and impelling collection of evidence of interaction
between Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Rosenberg saw the
Median-semites as the cause of decline of this originally Aryan
religion which, in its original form, was suited to Nordic
peoples.
Zarathustra taught the values of an agrarian lifestyle. He
did not like city life and rejected its tendencies to create new,
alien values of degrading types. He believed in keeping the
peace with one’s neighbors, being a good animal husband, and
in acting with honor toward one’s neighbors. He rejected the
roving bands of nomads who sought only to disrupt peaceful
34 Alfred Rosenberg

nations, taking their towns, animals and farms by force.

Rosenberg interpreted this exclusion as a rejection of the
Hebrews who had left Egypt and wandered as such roving
bands until they happened to come into the arable lands of
other tribes. They stole their lands, took over their towns and
lived off their civilization which they could not have fabricated
themselves. The type-forming personality of Zarathustra left its
impression on the Aryans who continued to practice an
agrarian, rural lifestyle.
The teachings of Zarathustra were revived by Mani
("Apostle of God"), the second great type-forming personality
of the ancient Aryans. Mani was of Persian origins. He had
probably learned much of the Zoroastrian system natively
before receiving his own revelations at the age of 12. His public
mission began at the age of 24. His writings include the
Shapuraka, the Epistula Fundament! and the Kephalaia. So
thorough was the persecution of his followers following his
execution (c. 276) that, until very recently, all we knew of him
was from the bitter attacks on his ideas launched by Saint
Augustine and other orthodox Christian authorities.
Mani’s writings retain the absolute dichotomy between
good and evil that marked Zoroastrianism. It was impossible,
Mani claims, to trace both good and evil to the same source, so
great is the distinction between the two. Evil is a force that
exists on its own authority. It stands against all that is good,
honorable and courageous. One must be saved or redeemed
from the power of evil. Once one has recognized what
constitutes evil he will immediately fly from it toward the power
of good. He sees in evil the striking contrast that it produces in
life: good and evil, darkness and lights, truth and lie, spirit and
matter. God’s purpose in founding the world, or, rather, in
fabricating it from pre-existing material, was to separate out,
once and for all times, good from evil. Before, the universe was
an admixture of good and evil, neither chaos nor cosmos. With
 The Roots of Christianity 35

sen’s help (as "God’s high ally") evil will be vanquished for
eternity.
Note that Mani has posited an eternal world, a world of
%e-existing stuff, a world eternal in the same way that God is
eternal. He only made it over, as world artificer, not as creator.
Phis fit well with Rosenberg’s claim that the Nordic type-former
has denied creation ex nihilo. This world serves to enable man
xnd God to render evil forever harmless and prevent a
reoccurrence of intermingling of good and evil.
Man has a pre-existing function of the soul that
corresponds to Meister Eckhart’s "spark" of the soul. It was with
God, but God sent it into the world to aid him in his struggle
with evil. After death, that is, after it has cojoined with others
and with God in doing battle with evil, it returns to a
contemplation of the Godhead. While here and present man
must sort the iniquity from his sou). This is his individual task.
Only if he succeeds can his soul become worthy of God. The
soul cannot fly back to the Godhead unless it has purged the
darkness from itself.
Primal man knew both light and darkness. Darkness
attacked his soul and promoted greed and envy of the pure
light. Man attempted to combat the darkness, but it was too
strong and he was defeated. According to the strength of his
will and his connection to light, more or less darkness attracted
him. One attribute of the power of darkness was its hold on
man to prefer material to spiritual existence. To the degree that
man prefers matter, he will be attracted to material possessions.
To the degree he resisted darkness he is attracted to the light
and rejects wealth in material things in diference to spiritual
wealth.
As the Father of Greatness struggled against the powers
of darkness the Darkness personified fabricated Adam and Eve.
Through procreation they and their descendants dissipate light.
The sin of Eve, implicating Adam also, set in motion a
36 Alfred Rosenberg

prolonged chain of redemption. Their offspring, as mixtures of

good and evil (light and darkness) struggle in this world for
supremacy. One strain of Manichaean theology places good
races in opposition to one another. To Rosenberg, this was a
natural and logical development of Mani’s thought. The Nordic
races represented light while the Semites represented evil.
The Talmud became a document registering the history
of the children of darkness while the Aryan vedas and myths
recorded the saga of the children of light. Augustine had taken
Manichaean doctrine and twisted it so that, while other Semites,
notably the Babylonians, became children of darkness, the
Hebrews were transposed to become children of the light.
Rosenberg argued that their conspiracy was completed when
they took over the teachings of Jesus and repressed Mani and
his followers. He thought that Mani had discovered the Hebrew
conspiracy and that was why-his teachings were repressed and
why Mani was assassinated (martyred?). By cleansing
Manichaean teachings in The City of God, Augustine has served
the Jewish conspiracy in his time just as Paul had served it in
his time.
Had Mani's followers been sufficiently strong they would
have removed Jewish ideas from the Christian Church and
substituted their own. Rosenberg thought Mani’s teachings were
closer to those of Jesus than the Christian doctrine as
expounded by Saint Paul. As it was, they were too weak and
disorganized. Their numbers were too few to stand against the
Jews and their Hither-Asiatic allies. But they were strong
enough to spread their ideas so that, even after the repression,
their ideas remained in the Western Church. A few of their
scrolls of teachings were preserved by a few heroes. In every
age, the teachings endured underground.
Mani had no monopoly on the truth. What he saw was
a portion of the total truth preserved in the Aryan soul. His
theology was somewhat imprecise and it was veiled in myth.
 The Roots of Christianity 37

Another type-former would be able, in another age, to pull out

its truth elements. These would be, in the proper time,
combined with the ideas and myths of other Nordic type-
formers. The ideas of Mani would be only one of the myriad of
roots of the reconstructed Nordic religion.
Had it not been for Mani it is quite possible, said
Rosenberg, that the Nordic soul might have been crushed under
the heel of Jewish-Roman authoritarianism. However, the type­
forming force of Mani was strong enough to offer an alternative
way of thinking. It reinforced the Nordic values of honor and
duty and courage. It reasserted the idea of eternal hostility to
the forces of evil, darkness, and the redemptive promise of the
forces of light and good. It suggested that "devilish falsity" of the
Jewish history could be challenged and that the Old Testament
must be purged from Nordic Christianity.
With the Augustinian conquest of Mani and the
incorporation of his ideas, albeit falsely, the Nordic soul was
conquered for 1500 years. The "Canaan monstrosity," creation
er nihilo, and all of its attendant ideas, would be dominant in
the West. The unmasking of Mani’s theology would prevail
despite all efforts to eradicate it wholly.
Within the New Testament there are kernels of truth,
provided one knows how to look for them. Rosenberg reasoned
that if one knows, one might proceed by removing the Jewish
lies that were typical of the race. The residue left over after lies
had been expunged would be representative of the teachings of
the true Jesus. Rosenberg had identified the objectives of the
Jews in subverting and taking over control of Christianity.
Those things which served Jewish objectives were lies. Those
which seemed to contradict or refute Jewish goals constituted
the true Christian message. Fortunately, Saint Paul had been
confronted by true Christians and could not wholly distort the
truth and suppress Christ’s teachings. By the time personal
witnesses had died the Christian writings had become so famous
38 Alfred Rosenberg

that the Jews could not complete the expurgation.

Although one would ordinarily not expect the National
Socialist state to permit the study of "alien" civilizations, there
would be exceptions to that rule. Judaic studies provide the
notable exception. The purpose of Semitics was to uncover the
nature of Judaism in relation to Christianity. One would need
to know what teachings the Jews held sacred and what meant
little to them. One would need to understand "alien" ideas that
had no corresponding form in the Nordic soul. For example, the
idea of creation ex nihilo was quintessential to the Hebrew
religion. All Hither-Asiatic conceptions of God depended on his
being creator. Once such fundamentals were unearthed one
could expunge these from the New Testament and renew the
"true" teachings of Jesus. Since the study of Judaism would
discover that the Old Testament was nothing but Jewish history
and the extension of the idea of creation, it could be dispensed
with quite easily. So also could all ideas associated with a
Jewish prophet or redeemer be ignored. Jewish ideas could be
removed from the New Testament and then its message would
become clear.[Myth of the Twentieth Century, p.185].
The remaining texts could be supplied by inferring what
a true Nordic soul would place in an Aryan religion. These new
texts would be expressions of the world-view and eternal soul
of the Germanic peoples. While the texts might not be textually
true, they would be substantively correct. Of course, the Aryan
was not interested in the literal formalities; rather, he would be
interested in the philosophical and conceptual content of the
message of the Nordic Jesus. The reasoning, although circular,
is reasonably consistent. If Jesus was God, as we should want
that He was, He could not lie or deceive. Since He had to tell
the truth, He had to have spoken of the nobility of the Aryan
soul, and of the importance of racial consciousness, these things
being necessarily and metaphysically true. He had to have
warned of the deceit of the Jews since the Jews were evil
 The Roots of Christianity 39

■personified. He had to have spoken of the inferiority of the

.rernal personalities of the ignoble races, since races other than
Xryan had been created inferior to the Nordic peoples. He had
z have extolled Aryan virtues and urged Nordic peoples to
how racial pride in their racial traits.
Even if it were to be proved that Jesus was not God, the
mythical Jesus of Nordic Christianity behaved as though He
'•ere God. Thus, as the mythical Jesus possessed the qualities
God, He would still be worthy of our admiration and
-deration as the personification of the Nordic God and as a
?pe-forming personality. He could remain as a symbol of the
Godhead.
Religion is internal, not external. Man does seek to
internalize his internal sentiments. The Nordic Christ is not an
abject of worship, but an unnecessary externalization of the
unique, personal relationship between man and God. The
emphasis would clearly be on God as found in the hearts of
Tien, not in the temples of men. Here the Lutheran doctrine of
internalized religion emerges clearly. Rosenberg believed that
the true message of Jesus was non-semitic, even anti-semitic.
The Jews took over his ideas when the new cult could not be
curtailed otherwise, inculcated it with the Jewish spirit and
made the Jewish ideals of love and humility its supreme values.
They based its philosophy on the idea of creation ex nihilo. The
Jewish Jehovah was placed at the center of the Christian
godhead. The Hebrew Old Testament was appended to the
Christian writings. All the sayings and teachings of Jesus were
cast in Jewish doctrines. The law of Moses was "fulfilled" in
Christ.
By the time we arrive at Saint Augustine, all Christians,
even a black African, as Augustine was reputed to have been,
were prepared to defend Jewish teachings as though they were
at the center of the ideas held by the historical Jesus. Only the
Jews, Rosenberg held, knew that they had taken over and
40 Alfred Rosenberg

altered Christian teachings. Those other few persons, notably

Justin Martyr and Mani, who discovered this were executed.
Their ideas and writings were suppressed as being heretical and
anti-Christian. Their followers were forcibly reconverted to
orthodox Christianity or killed. Killing was preferable to
reconversion because dead Manichaeans could not revert to
their former religion, but converts could relapse into the heresy
of which they had formerly been purged.
The idea of pride that was central to Christ was changed
to the traditional Hebrew conception of love. Honor and duty
were subordinated to church teachings and a body of literature
grew showing that this, benefited both man and God. Love
meant racelessness, race-mixing and race-chaos. The Jews
remained aloof from these processes of disintegration and
miscegenation. They alone retained a theology that warned
against mixing with other races. For all other races there was to
be a world of brotherhood and community and no reference
was to be made to racial pride. The initial sacrifice of Saul to
Christianity did not have to be repeated because of other
Gentiles were willing to defend the Old Testament and Jewish-
Christianity. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, pp. 130-31].
 The Gnostic Origins of Christianity

It has been said that the Christian opponent of Judaism

as two alternatives: to de-Judaize Christ or to deny Him.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, following many theologians of
“addle Europe in the 19th century, attempted to prove that
.’esus was an Aryan living in an isolated area of Galilee, and
'Cparated racially from the rest of the peoples of the region.
The author Qi Foundations of the Nineteenth Century attempted
‘0 show that an isolated group of Nordics had been cut off from
he mainstream of the nation, and that Christ was descended
item such people. Field Marshal Ludendorf and others merely
denied the relevance of Jesus, and were anti-Christian as well
is anti-Hebrew. These two traditions accepted in common the
dea that the Bible, Old and New Testaments alike, was literal
■si story.
A third possibility underlies Rosenberg’s thought. The
origins are rooted in pre-Christian ideas and' practices
commonly known in the West as gnosticism. Like many other
generic terms, gnosticism is used by many to cover a wide
variety of philosophical-theological thought. Because of the
success of the Western Church, including its more recent
Protestant forms, the systems which were vanquished in the
long struggle for religious supremacy in Christendom are
thought of in a totally negative context. Such names as
Marcionite, Manichaean, and Bogomilite, are pejoratives. Most
of what was known about them was either secretly guarded or
was learned from reading the refutations of opponents or the
accounts of one or another Inquisition, including the
interrogations (most often of unlearned members under torture)
of those who were accused of heresy.
In the 20th Century there have been two major
developments which have changed what we know about the
various "heresies." One is the discovery of major documents
42 Alfred Rosenberg

and treatises either by leading gnostics or by their closest

disciples and followers. The other development is the interest
shown by leaders of the Third Reich in these movements, and
the subsequent study of the ideology in terms of such thought.
Among the major works to appear reinterpreting the National
Socialist movement in such terms are Pauwels and Bergiers’
The Morning of the Magician (in French, and translated into
many languages), Ravenscroft’s The Spear of Destiny and The
Cup of Destiny and Angebert’s The Occult and the Third Reich.
Most of the authors who have rediscovered the gnostics
and their influence on the Third Reich have assumed that the
leaders kept the bases of knowledge secret, usually in the SS
shrines and rituals, and that this special knowledge was never
intended for mass distribution. Only the few specially selected
SS types could be entrusted with the age-old secrets. Even in
the pre-Third Reich State, Rosenberg had distributed his essay
on the origins of Nazi ideology (actually written before the
NSDAP was formed). His Myth of the 20th Century discussed
one particular gnostic sect, the Cathars (Holy or Purified Ones),
in great detail, but stopped short of offering a simplified version
of the Cathar religion-philosophy as the new religion (or
reinstated religion) of Germany. It may be viewed as the basis
of Nordic Christianity, but is still different from the Cathar
doctrine.
In the area of religion, Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the
20th Century is quintessentially a gnostic work which attempted
to set the stage for subsequent works which would have taken
Germany back in time, to a stage in which a simplified, anti-
Jewish religion was the common practice in the West among
the common people. It was designed not as a final statement on
the New Nordic Religion, but was to serve as a precursor of
what was to come. In the early 1920s Rosenberg was not
prepared to offer a final statement of his philosophy. The new
religion had to be the old religion. A highly important task of
 The Gnostic Origins of Christianity 43

the state, then, was to rediscover basic pre-Reformation

Christianity. The research necessary for the full recreation of
early Nordic Christianity had not been completed in
Rosenberg’s time. There was only a promise of things to come.
It was a quest which may, in his terms, be likened unto King
Arthur’s setting the Knights of the Round Table on the quest
for the Holy Grail.

The Grail Legend

Every German schoolboy knew the great folk tale of the

Grail legend by heart. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival was
one of the greatest works of literature in the German (or any
other) language. On the surface it is a familiar tale of a pure
knight’s search for perfect love and redemption. It had been
popularized in the late Nineteenth Century in operatic form by
the composer Richard Wagner. Few pieces of heroic literature
had more impact on the nation-conscious Germans than
Parzival [see "Scientific Racism" for a summary of Wagner’s
opera on the Grail legend].
Within Germany many regarded the Grail as the lost,
secret book of the Aryan race. It had been entrusted to them
since eons past, and was lost and recovered on occasion. It
represented a fair time, of what had ben, and because it had
been, there was an inherent promise that this holy time might
come again. What precisely it contained was unknown, and
since it was written in symbols, the interpretation given these
runes may differ from age to age. It was the one great treasure'
of all Aryans, at all times. From age to age it had been the.
uniting factor, one artifact that provided a rationale for the
existence of the race.
John Boorman’s recent British movie Excalibur (1981)
has given a similar, highly secularized, interpretation of the
Grail myth. The movie views the Grail as an intermediary
44 Alfred Rosenberg

between ruler and ruled, a magic transmitter that guarantees

that the king and the land are one, and that each will serve the
other in a wholly natural relationship. When the king fails so
does the land. It is the spiritual dimension of the Grail that
allows for this mythical union. This is an interesting return to
the Old Testament view of land and king. We may recall that
Jehovah punished the land and people for the sin of adultery
committed by King David and Bathsheba.
The Grail predated the creation of Christianity. To
understand the Grail legend we must appreciate the antiquity
of the artifact. This is related to the importance of the Grail as
an artifact to the NSDAP and its leaders, notably the SS.
Rosenberg in the Myth of the Twentieth Century viewed the
Grail as an important basis of German objection to some
aspects of Roman Catholicism. It provided direction to the
German people, or at least a significant portion of it, when the
people were confronted by orthodox Western church teachings
which were alien to their racial heritage.
While the authors of the recent studies, notably
Angebert and Ravenscroft, and to a lesser degree Pauwels and
Bergier, have noted the importance of the Cathars of the 11th
through the 14th centuries, they have not gone far enough in
their research. It is true, as we shall see below, that the "Pure
Ones" did preserve, for a time, the Grail and other related
artifacts. However, they were relative latecomers, both
doctrinally and in terms of interest in and preservation of the
Grail.

The Marcionitc Heresy

We must return to the Second century, A.D., to Marcion

of Sinope in Pontus, to see the development of the whole body
of literature surrounding the Grail. The greater portion of what
stood in contradistinction to both Western Catholicism and the
 The Gnostic Origins of Christianity 45

later Orthodox schism from that church, can be seen at least

germinally in Marcion. He, like many, had struggled with the
great problem of evil. The Church had not as of that time
decided its own explanation of evil in the world. The question
’■'as far from settled when Marcion was writing.
The Marcionites believed that evil was truly a real force,
not merely the privation of some good. One may, for
simplification, regard that evil power as the Devil, Satan, or the
Lord of the Flies. He is truly a power to be reckoned with. The
world was the source of sin and corruption, and was to be
avoided. It had been created just as the Old Testament had
said, but not by God. There was a lesser being, or beings, much
like the classic Greek "world artificers." Sometimes known as
a Demiurge, that creator had a spark of divinity, for he was a
son of God, an emanation from the Most High.
Man naturally longs for his true home, but that is
unknown to him. He is trapped in a world of corruption and
ruination. As a matter of fact, the material world is not God’s
creation. The spirit of man longs for heaven while man’s body
belongs to the material world. God created spirit and heaven
and the devil created matter and entraps man’s spirit within the
world. This is what we know as "cosmic dualism."
To Marcion, the Old Testament was a lie because it was
the story of a false God, a deceiver: Jehovah. Most, if not all,
of the various characters in the Old Testament were a deceit.
The people of the One True God must reject the book of lies
and falsehoods and deceit. It was the story of the Jews. They
were the people of Jehovah, that is, a race dedicated to the
false god. Marcion agreed with the Jews on one point: their
messiah had not yet come. Jesus Christ was not their redeemer;
he had come to liberate men from the false religion of Jehovah.
Jehovah was at home in the material world because it was his
mirror image, made in his (not the alien-God’s) image and
likeness. In his anti-cosmic dualism, Marcion put the unknown
46 Alfred Rosenberg

God in opposition to the inferior creator-god, Jehovah. The

salvation of mankind meant, in a word, liberation from Jehovah,
Salvation was not of the Jews; it was rescue from the Jews.
The contrast between the two worlds and their respective
gods is very great. Marcion saw Jehovah as a warrior-avenger,
interested in perpetuating a world of retribution. The gentle
Jesus, the agent of the unknown (alien) God, is merciful and
filled with love. The true God could not exist in this world, for
he is pure spirit and is in direct opposition to the conflict and
disorder which is inherent in matter.
The Marcionites rejected any and all things which tied
one to the material world, or which seemed to tie one there, or
which seemed to suggest physical redemption or conversion of
material things. Thus they rejected baptism, except as a
manifestation of their disdain for the material world. Holy
Communion was a great contradiction, for it had as its primary
content the transfixion of material things into the realm of the
spirit and of the unknown God. Men must reject all earthly
pleasures. These distractions were to be avoided because they
tended to tie one to the temporal world. Sexual contact was
another more serious tie to the visible world. Procreation of
children meant that more sparks of the spirit were to be
entrapped in the world of tears and deceit.
Because He is pure goodness and mercy, the unknown
God adopted mankind, or at least that portion which as his own
and to whom he could come, and who would accept and love
him. God gave us grace quite freely to aid in our salvation, but
because we as lowly beings could not merit it. He gave us this
precious gift because he loved us although he did not yet know
us. This is Marcion’s doctrine of "pure grace," a quintessential
part of Marcionite theology. God so loved the world that,
although it was unknown to him, he chose to bring men to live
with him so that he and men could come to know one another
 The Gnostic Origins of Christianity 47

in a world so far removed from the corruption of the present

one.
Morality was not regarded as conformity to some law of
Nature; nature was physical, and thus corrupt. God was in the
world. Natural laws were the embodiment of the demi-urge,
Satan, not the Unknown God. One ought to avoid contact with
nature in all its visible forms, for it leads one away from the
true God.
. While it is faith, not knowledge, that leads us toward
God, we must have access to and know the special knowledge
that much of what passes as religion is false. We must know, in
Marcion’s schema, that the Unknown God is God, and that the
creator of the world is only a .demi-urge, an evil emanation
from God. Christ the Son of God came to bring us to know that
which we cannot know directly, in and of ourselves. That we are
trapped in matter without hope of redemption unless we know
the correct faith is a matter of special, or gnostic, revelation.
That God invites us strangers into his home without any
knowledge of us, or we of him, is a canon of faith which can be
known only through this special knowledge.
Marcion dropped elements of the New Testament that
he did not like. What remained were expurgated portions of the
Gospels (notably Luke), some of Paul’s letters, and bits of the
Acts of the Apostles. It is noteworthy that the Western church
had not, as of this time, codified the New Testament. Marcion
was more restrictive than most of the priests of the time in his
choice of acceptable materials for the services. He rejected the
Old Testament entirely, although one deviation of the time,
possibly not Marcionite, devolved into snake worship, based on
the Old Testament tale of the snake tempting Evil.
Presumably, the snake was a good symbol for it was set in
contradistinction to the ones Marcion had made evil characters.
The snake was believed to be bringing certain knowledge of
Satan, the creator of Adam and Eve.
48 Alfred Rosenberg

In censoring the New Testament, Marcion excised those

references made to an early childhood of Christ. Since Jesus
was the messenger of the Most High, the Unknown God, he
could not have been immersed in matter. Without having to
materialize, Jesus had appeared to men to have a body and
then only at Capernaum. He came to save those who would
reject Judaism and Jehovah. What his precious blood
purchased, in a metaphorical sense, was the freedom from the
false god, Jehovah. He offered a baptism which would reject the
world and all its material evils. One was to be "married" only to
Christ so that child-bearing was avoided and man could escape
the material world.
 The Theological Background

Two figures stand out as providing theological direction

' (he Nordic Christianity Rosenberg advocated: Justin Martyr
id Meister Eckhart. Both looked at extant Christianity as a
?rruption of the true message of Christ. Both saw the need for
counter-revolution in theology, a restoration of its basic
.achings as found in the ideas of Jesus Christ. Both rejected
■a layers of law and ceremonial formalism that had marked
. lurch history until their own times.
The Church hierarchy branded Justin a heretic. He
night God not in the externals of formal religion but in the
ip t hs of the soul. Rosenberg believed that Justin had
nstructed a "racial soul" which is attuned to a true theology
recisely because neither could bear the burden of rigid
.Tnalism. Man is his natural condition could not endure evil;
e sought the good, the true and the eternal by a natural
sposition of the will. Those who lacked a contact point with
'is natural morality sought refuge in codified volumes of law.
Ve shall look at each of these men separately.
Justin identified the problem. Judaism had captured
Tiristianity. The leaders of the Hebrew people were, on the
ne hand, unwilling to accept Christ as the Messiah, while, on
ie other hand, remaining unwilling to cut Christianity loose
'om its Jewish roots. Thus, Christianity, in its Pauline version,
as nothing more than perverted Judaism. Converted Jews like
?aul took it over and added the traditional Hebrew emphasis
a formal codes of law and canons of faith. The Church
ocreasingly ritualized the Christian practices.
The earliest and perhaps most significant of the post-
\postolic church apologists was Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 A.D.).
He was born a pagan of parents of orthodox Roman views and
?hilosophy. Dissatisfied with the attendant theology, Justin
embarked on an extensive voyage seeking after ultimate truth.
An unnamed but "venerable" old man directed him toward one
50 Alfred Rosenberg

of the many Christian missionaries then spreading the word of

God in Asia Minor. Now thirty years old, Justin cast off the
philosopher’s robe and became a zealot after his new found
religion. His fine mind quickly established him as a learned
scholar and interpreter of Christian doctrine. His bitter attacks
on the deficiencies of paganism earned him powerful enemies,
the principal one of which was the cynic philosopher Crescens.
Justin’s trial, in which he vigorously defended his faith, ended
in a sentence of death after scourging. Justin seems to have
actively sought that martyrdom, especially when accompanied
by the scourging which was the ultimate compliment since Jesus
had been scourged before his death. Justin was beheaded near
Rome.
Many spurious works have been attributed to Justin at
various times, but the only genuine ones still extant are his
Apologia and a summary of that famous work. Much of the.
Apology has been lost, but we have a good idea of its contents
from the shorter summary. It was probably written to the
Roman emperor Antonius Pius and the latter’s son, Marcus
Aurelius. The second, wholly extant work is considered to be an
appendix to the first when looked at from the context in which
each work was written. Another work, the Dialogues with the
Jew Trypho (Tryphone) is probably of later authorship although
most scholars agree that is probably contains an excellent and
true summary of Justin’s arguments and disputes on theological
matters with its subject.
Justin was probably a Roman citizen of Greek ancestry.
He had no knowledge either of Christianity or Judaism before
his conversion to Christianity. He never thought of the
teachings of Jesus as a fulfillment of some promises given to the
Hebrew peoples, and he certainly had no interest in making it
compatible with Judaism. There is no evidence that Justin
sought out any contact with Hebrew theology or traditions, and
it is likely that he disliked Saint Paul (Saul). Saint Paul saw his
 The Theological Background 51

mission as one of making the new Christian religion compatible

vith Judaism. There is one powerful argument that he wanted
:o bring Christian theology into conformity with the vast
complexity of Jewish law. While maintaining that this is not so,
while disclaiming rigid formalism in his various letters (epistles),
nonetheless Paul instilled a sense of rigorous formalism
heretofore not associated with Christianity. This Justin rejected
fully. If it can be truly said of Paul that he sought to make
Christianity compatible with, albeit the servant of, Judaism,
men it might be said that Justin saw his mission as one of
making Christianity compatible with Gentile, perhaps Nordic,
culture. He certainly made the effort to reconcile Christianity
with the non-Hebrew, non-semitic, non-Eastern world.
Rosenberg contended that there was a Nordic message
in the writings of some of the early Gentile Christians. The
Four Gospels were neither strongly pro-Hebrew nor strongly
anti-Hebrew, although there are strong statements condemning
the Jews for various transgressions against God and against his
Son. It remained for Paul to bring in much Jewish formalism.
Tradition that held that Jesus was the son of a descendant of
David and others of the historical figures of the then extant
Scriptures was not satisfactory to Justin. God the Father, whom
the Greeks commonly called Logos, had pre-existed in the
hearts and souls of all men, as the seed (literally, in Justin:
sperm). This seed could be and was activated in non-Jews of
various talents and persuasions. That is why pagan, non-Jewish
thinkers produced the most significant works of theology and
philosophy. Their ideas could serve as beacons of truth just as
much as could the inspired writings of the Old Testament
Hebrews.
Following his conception of the "seed of God" in each
man, Justin assumed that, when the allegedly chosen people
deserted God, or God’s representatives, most notably Jesus, the
mantle of leadership fell from them. Jesus may or may not have
52 Alfred Rosenberg

been divine in Justin’s thought. Justin is obscure on this point

and his commentators disagree on the interpretation of Justin’s
thought as well. Whether divine or not, Jesus was the
instrument of the Divine Logos, the agent who instructed
mankind in the desires of the Father. The Jews killed Christ
and thus they are no longer, presuming they ever were, the
chosen of God. Christians are now the chosen ones.
Justin really is not interested in determining the status
of the Jews before New Testament times. The new covenant is
now the only covenant. As a Gentile, Justin had no historical
interest in the veracity of any agreement that never concerned
him and which, has now been superseded by the fihal and
lasting covenant. Justin’s writings were the first to refute de
facto Paul on the necessity of a Hebrew-Christian synthesis.
That confluence of traditions seemed both improbable and
undesirable to Justin. His dialogues with Trypho show quite
clearly that Justinian theology is non-semitic; it is very definitely
Roman, not Etruscan-Near Eastern. Justin’s responses to
Trypho make it very clear that he set up a Christian model that
will stand in clear juxtaposition to Judaism. The second portion
of the Apology reinforces that argument. Christianity is not
merely a form of Judaism or Jewish or other sectarian-racial
prophecies fulfilled. Christianity is the culmination of the seed
of God being brought to fruition through the Son. Justin’s
theology is clearly Gentile Christian, quite apart from and free
of any Ebionitic taint. It is the principal and earliest exposition
of a Alexandrian-Hellenistic conception and exposition of the
true message of Jesus in the new, and now only important,
Scripture. His is quite clearly and consciously a major departure
from Pauline orthodoxy. Rosenberg argued that, in reality,
Justin sought, to return to the teachings of Christ as these
existed before the corrupting influence of Paul took the place
of Christ’s true teaching.
 The Theological Background 53

Some commentators have tried to mitigate Justin’s views

by adding to his works spurious additions that suggest that he
was an orthodox Pauline. For example, one work, Cohortatio ad
Graecos, attempted to add the thought that only through Moses,
i.e., only through the Old Testament Jews, could one fathom
the true nature and intent of God. This forgery suggested that
Justin truly meant to say that the only truth in pagan writers
was derived somehow from the Jews. Another work, Orazio ad
Graecos, pointed to the complete folly and irrationality of all
pagan institutions and writings.
Justin approached morality and sin not from the
perspective of Ebionitic or Hebrew theology, but from the
traditional Stoic values of Greece. To Justin, it was irrational to
try to work out a complex theology of right and wrong along the
lines of the Law of Moses. He did not care to set such rigid
written standards. An act was not to be carried before a council
of judges to be measured against a longitude of wrong and
latitude of right in exact minutes, degrees and seconds. Justin’s
Christianity was eventually reducible to three major principles:
(1) worship of God, mostly through private prayer and
communication of being; (2) belief in an after-life with rewards
and punishments for one’s actions in this world; and (3) the
importance of leading a virtuous life in imitation of Christ and
in obedience to his commandments. All else was unnecessary.
Other canons of faith marked too rigid a formalism for virtuous
man. Laws that detail man’s conduct in great detail are
necessary for the peoples which have no morality of their own,
but are wholly superfluous for a virtuous race.
Justin was not a racist in the common and ordinary sense
of the word. He did divide mankind into various groupings for
certain purposes. Some types or races of mankind possessed a
native virtue, or, perhaps more accurately, a propensity for
knowing what is right and what is wrong. This theory of moral
sentiments merely showed a racial potential for combining with
54 Alfred Rosenberg

God. Certain races or groupings have developed a sense of

morality because they are attuned to the divine message hidden
deep inside the soul. This propensity for doing good and
avoiding evil is developed over a prolonged period of time in
the history of the race. One individual cannot either enhance it
or sublimate this propensity. A people that has no racial sense
for morality must have an involved law elaborated for it in
complex and precise terms.
Over and against the theology of Moses, Justin’s morality
is freed from the letters of ceremonial formalist and legal
complexity. In this sense Socrates and Parmenides, Heraclitus
and Diogenes might be called Christians in that they innately
possessed the idea of right and wrong. In another sense, Moses
and Elias, Abraham and Jesse might never become Christians
for their feel for morality derives solely from the law of God .set
in stone.
Along with a natural morality some races possess a
natural logic or reason. These are the creative people, a special
or chosen people, who do God’s work on earth. From natural
reason alone some of the ancients proved the existence of all
encompassing deity which, philosophically, approximated the
God of Christians. These men or races of men are spiritually
Christian. Justin could and did ignore the election of the
Hebrews as the chosen ones. He chose instead those whose
morality, culture, aesthetics, intellectual accomplishments and
creativity matched the divine design. If the Old Testament
Hebrews had been able to match Justin’s paradigm then they,
too, might have become Christians. To the degree that they
matched another, possibly self-serving Pauline paradigm, they
were not to be considered the children of God, or Christians.
A true Christian is an eternal concept with Justin, wholly
transcending the historical period in which the bearer of this
vital, type-forming idea actually lived. A great man of any
 The Theological Background 55

oeriod might be a Christian, provided only that he subscribe to

the paradigm.
While earlier writers, following the more literal Hebrew
interpretation of the coming of a Messiah, looked forward to an
earthly reign of a Kingdom of God on earth, Justin expressed
little interest in this world. This was true of the earliest
Christian thought, before the Pauline corruption. Justin did not
characterize his theology as genuinely orthodox. It seemed to
him impolitic to give chiliasm marked prominence. He sought
the martyr’s death and expected equal dedication of others. He
was not looking for an earthly reward or an end to the
persecution of the secular pagan rulers; indeed, the end of
persecution would mark the end of a glorious martyrdom as
well. To him, it was an unusual and undesirable confluence of
-*wo highly divergent points of view to suggest that a synthesis
was necessary between secular rule of a restored house of
David or Solomon on the one hand while speaking of a final
spiritual realm on the other hand. He dared not reject this or
other doctrines, for they had even this early been established as
doctrine, but he could downplay their importance in hopes that
such alien ideas be forgotten.
The true religious service in Justin’s theology was simple
and direct. The center of the service was the Lord’s Last
Supper. A brotherly kiss, a few simple prayers and the
sacrament of the eucharist by the ministrant were all that was
needed. This followed the basic assumption that morality
existed naturally in a truly Godly people. God required nothing
elaborate or highly ritualistic. Rigid formalism and
ceremonialism did nothing but attract the uncreative voices of
ihe literal law to a bureaucratic priesthood. There was no
advantage to the moral body of the people. The New Testament
had not been codified because Justin and his followers were not
especially sanguine about so formalizing the Scripture that it
could become an authoritarian voice for the suppression of free
56 Alfred Rosenberg

and independent ideas. Without a formalized Scripture no

bureaucratic priesthood was mandated to codify, purify, protect
and defend the integrity and interpret the contents of Scripture.
Rosenberg did not draw Justin Martyr out of some
obscure page of history. His ideas had long had a minority
following within the Western Church. Justin’s followers had, by
Rosenberg’s graphic description, suffered martyrdom and
persecution throughout the history of Christendom. The papacy
had become "Romanized, Easternized and Judaized." Popes
and church councils saw in these ideas the only true threat to
its power and its position. Few, if any, other schools of thought
had sustained the position so well as had these two that the real
message of Jesus had been buried under the ill fitted outward
garments of an "alien" theology and sociology.
Rosenberg saw the church in much the same way most
Protestants had come to view it by the time of the Reformation:
a seat of great wealth and inordinate secular power. Its great
pageants and festivals brought untold wealth to the Vatican. Its
indulgences and talismans accounted for huge profits. Its abuse
of salvation through the use of interdiction and
excommunication gave it wide control over wholly political
matters. It could decide the choice of kings and emperors by
using its powers jus tereni imperii over elections and successions.
Its requirement that all men tithe in order to be saved gave the
church a huge, guaranteed income. Its ownership of serfs, slaves
and vast estates gave it more power than all the kingdoms in
Christendom combined. The Catholic Church was universal in
its secular as well as in its religious impact.
Had Justin’s appeal for a simplified Christianity based on
free will and innate sense of morality prevailed, the great
problems of the medieval abuses of power by corrupted, popes
might have been avoided. The hierarchy might never have
grown within the Western Church. The Pauline influence might
have been effectively countered. But Justin and his handful of
 The Theological Background 57

mllowers lacked the administrative and propagandistic talents

necessary to set their ideas in motion. He who has the
administrative talents will favor the creation of a hierarchy. He
who opposes such hierarchy generally lacks the organizational
ability to oppose centralization, institutionalization and
legalization.
Justin Martyr’s challenge awakened the opponents of
formalism and renewed the conflict within the church between
those who saw religion as a personalized internal experience
and those who place great emphasis on rules and rituals. In
Rosenberg’s view, Justin had reawakened the German racial
soul. Had he been a better propagandist, his views, and not
those of the Roman Catholic Church, would have prevailed.
The Nordic racial soul had the qualities of honor and
integrity and pride. That soul had the qualities of honor and
integrity and pride. That soul directed man toward his duty
naturally. It did not reside in the law; rather, it directed in the
most natural way possible. It was sufficient to point toward a
duty and hear an inner voice saying, such is the noble man’s
obligation. Action followed as night follows day precisely
because Nordic man was duty bound to fulfill what honor
dictated irrespective of the consequences.
In Rosenberg’s view, races were of two types: those
which had honor and those which were without honor. The Jews
had no honor so to them a rigid law was granted. They could
not exist without such a law. They lacked, in his estimate, true
substance of character. Their God mandated pain-pleasure
stimuli because honor was never motivating to inferior races
unless it was accompanied by a profit. Thus, a Jew could never
be expected to choose to follow a directive of moral character
unless it placed in jeopardy his life or his property. Additionally,
Rosenberg doubted if Jews had such an inner light to point
them toward the truth.
58 Alfred Rosenberg

Let us pursue this idea of conscience with Rosenberg. If

the Jew had once had a conscience he had lost it because the
weight of the law conditioned him to look externally, to the law,
never again internally, to the factor of conscience. The more
rigid the law became, the more the law was codified, the less
the existential requirement of looking inwardly to weigh the
morality for one’s own self. Jews neglected conscience over long
periods of time. Conscience became, metaphorically, a vestigial
organ, an obsolescent, perhaps, wholly obsolete, function of
man. In such inter-personal relationships as the law did not
cover the Jew could not, if he wanted to, act in a moral way. In
short, if the Jew had ever had a moral sense, it had long ago
disappeared.
The Nordic man, conversely, knew intuitively right from
wrong. He had no formal law as none was required. He had to
look only to conscience to set his standards of behavior. As
increasing awareness of a natural morality grew in Nordic man
he developed a reinforcement in terms of an honor code. That
became the key symbol of his existence. In all relationships man
had to mystically, intuitively and existentially do that which was
honorable irrespective of cost or inconvenience.
To Rosenberg Justin Martyr had been a singular voice
crying out for the honor code. He was noble, that is, Nordic, in
habit. Justin had opposed the Judaism of Paul and emphasized
a Nordic Christianity grounded in a non-semitic world.
Rosenberg claimed that Justin had taken a major step. While
Luther had disappointed Rosenberg because the architect of the
Reformation had relied on the self-same corrupter of the
church, Paul, the message of Nordic Christianity had been
sounded. It was a call that struck many other reformers who
wished to recreate anti-and non-semitic Christianity.
 The Manichaean Heresy

Alfred Rosenberg wrote very little on the heresies within

the Western Church before the Cathars, c. A.D. 1000. The
Cathars were generally called Manichaeans and their heterodox
theology was heavily dependent on the earlier Manichaeans.
There is no direct proof that the Cathars had access to the
legends and writings of the earlier heretics. It is true that ideas
are rarely eradicated, even with the most diligent effort.
Manichaean traditions, or at least parts of the traditions,
perhaps now only myths, passed through many minds before
arriving in the Cathar theology.
From the beginning there had been divisions within the
Western Church. The challenges were primarily doctrinal, but
their success was based on the individual prestige and preaching
ability of locally known priests. Whole communities generally
supported orthodoxy or fell to heterodoxy. Much of the teaching
was individualized to the private thoughts of a teacher and need
not refer to scripture for its authority.
Saul (Saint Paul) had written of those who worshipped
"another Jesus" and followed another doctrine, spirit and
Gospel [2 Cor. 11:4; Gal 1:6]. Much of Paul’s energies were
directed at establishing an orthodoxy, this in spite of his strong
condemnation of legalism and law and rule making. Heresy and
heterodoxy, of course, can exist only in reference to an
established set of rules, laws, beliefs and tenets called
orthodoxy. Once orthodoxy was established anything that
rejected or violated it was obviously heterodoxy, or erroneous
teaching. The idea of choice among several, even many,
competing factions within a given philosophical-theological
school was well established in biblical times. Paul preferred
unity and single-mindedness to choice. Saul discussed these
camps of Christianity [1 Cor. 11:18-19]. He specifically
condemned pluralism and factionalism in Christianity [Titus
3:10-11]. His idea of the Latin terms hairesis and schisma was
60 Alfred Rosenberg

not the traditional tolerance. He was not interested in opposing

in debate alternative ideas, views and interpretations of Christ’s
mission and teaching. He viewed those challenges to orthodoxy
as discordant and theologically deviant. [1 Timothy 6:3-5; 2 Tim
4:3-4]. Virtually all later suppression of heterodoxy refers back
to Paul’s defense of orthodoxy and condemnation of heresy and
error.
There was little question that there ought to be only one
correct doctrine [Matthew 16: 15-19 and Matt. 28: 16-20]. Only
established authority can suppress, correct, condemn and
repress heterodox views. The Church from the beginning had
two choices in dealing with heterodoxy. Using caritas [love,
charity], the Church sought to guide, instruct and correct
erroneous views. It urged the heretics to repent of their evil
ways and to return to the correct teachings of the church and
community. It also sought to reason together to find the answers
to disputed questions. Most of the original church councils were
held in the spirit of caritas to decide orthodoxy and to seek to
persuade those with contrary opinions to join the fold. Its
teaching authority was sufficiently strong to prevent
fragmentation of Christianity.
As the church gained authority and power it increasingly
abandoned reason and caritas in favor of potestas (legal
coercion of heretics and those who believed in error). The
Western Church was responsible for martyrdom of early figures
such as Mani as. well as for full fledged wars (crusades) against
those holding heterodox views. They found support in Peter:
"Israel had false prophets as well as true; and you likewise will
have false teachers among you. They will import disastrous
heresies ... bringing swift disaster upon their own heads .... In
their greed for money they will trade on your credulity with
sheer fabrications." [2 Peter 2:1-9], There was no room for
fusion of several factions or camps; and no room for
compromise and negotiated settlement.
 The Manichaean Heresy 61

An example of an early major challenge to Christian

orthodoxy came in the second century after Christ. Montanus of
Phrygia raised the question of continuing revelation. Was what
God had revealed in the New Testament complete, or might
there be additional, perhaps continual, revelation? Claiming to
be the only true form of Christianity, Montanism held as a
matter of faith that revelation was continual, and certainly not
complete. Many have returned to this position, even down to
the present day.
The Arian heresy was the only early heterodoxy to
trouble both the Roman and the Germanic worlds before the
eighth century. It was thus of greater interest to Rosenberg than
most other heterodox theologies. It began with a dispute
between Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, and the local bishop,
Alexander. What was the correct way to explain the relations
between the Father and the Son? Arius’ teachings subordinated
the Son to the Father and denied that Christ was co-etemal
with the Father. The question was taken up at Emperor
Constantine’s order and decided at the Council of Nicaea in
325, A.D. This did not settle the dispute and it continued
throughout the fourth and. fifth centuries, A.D. The German
invaders took up the dispute in the fifth century as the Roman
world crumbled and succumbed to the German invaders.
Few religious deviations in the Western church had
greater impact or longer-lasting effect than Manichaeanism.
Founded by Mani in Mesopotamia about 242 A.D., it was a
major rival to orthodox Christianity. Mani was martyred by the
Western Church in 276 A.D. Among the early adherents was
the great apologist for the Catholic Church, Saint Augustine,
who practiced its tenets from about 373 to 382. His City of God
has strong Manichaean tendencies in its absolute dichotomy
between good and evil, and between the city of man (visible
world) and the City of God (realm of the spirit)/
Mani reflected the gnostic background of the area and
62 Alfred Rosenberg

the times. The origin of evil lay in the nature of matter itself.
Its multiplicity is radically opposed to the simplicity and
spirituality of the True God. Matter is an evil which can never
be redeemed; it is essentially and eternally evil. The soul is
divine, for it is immaterial and simple, and both emanates from
the Divine and reflects the perfection of the Divinity. Man’s
body is but a prison in which the soul is entrapped. Redemption
is nothing more than the liberation of soul from body and is
found only in death.
The Demiurge, or lesser creator, created the visible
world out of particles which belonged to the powers of
darkness. These powers are opposed to the True God and the
whole realm of the spirit. They are forever entrapped in the
world of matter. They entice man to use his sexual powers to
continually procreate so that bits of the spirit are continually
entrapped in the bodies of men. Otherwise, human bodies
would be lifeless, hollow shells, and there would be no one for
the powers of darkness to control.
This absolute dichotomy between matter and spirit is
called Cosmic Dualism [or anti-cosmic dualism]. It underlies all
of the major works of gnosticism, but is especially evident in
Manichaeanism. Sin is concomitant with life itself in the
material world. Only the spark of life, the human spirit, is fit for
godly action or thoughts, and for redemption. Necessarily this
dualism concluded that whatever is merely finite (hence limited
in this time as well as space) is evil. Whatever is eternal is
good,, and the spirit of man is a spark of the eternal fire of God.
Manichaeanism had a rigid ethic. Mankind was
forbidden to kill animals or otherwise to shed blood. Sex was
condemned for reasons noted above. One was to reject Satan,
the world, “all material things, and all happiness based on
enjoyment of material goods. The elect or perfects travelled
without money or possessions, begging for their daily food. They
ignored secular laws which were in any way antithetical to their
 The Manichaean Heresy 63

'eligion, and openly sought martyrdom for their beliefs. A

significant portion of the community’s time and effort was
devoted to prayer and fasting. The membership was dependent
J a the lodging and hospitality of the common believers.
Strictly speaking, the Manichaeans were not Christians.
They did accept Christ as having been a divine being, or, at
east, a being who was guided by the Holy Spirit. But so too did
they accept all of the major religious leaders: Buddha, Lao-tzu
and others. They did reject the idea of incarnation that is the
cornerstone of Christianity. Jesus only appeared to be a man.
He was not crucified on one cross; he was, at all times and
□laces, omnipresent. Some of the critics of Manichaeanism
recused cult of pantheism. It is true that the Manichaeans had
"0 special use for many of the Christian beliefs. They rejected
Holy Communion on the ground that it was worthless because
3i the omnipresence of Jesus. They rejected the maintenance
and adoration of relics, such as the cross, partly because the
irtifacts were material and partly because they had no more
■elevance than any other physical item, since God was
everywhere.
The term Manichaeanism has come to represent any and
all varieties of dualism in which matter and spirit are
necessarily and essentially opposed. The movement died out
□robably for two reasons. It was too anti-social in its rejection
□f sex and because of its exclusiveness. (It went too far for many
n rejecting war, violence and bloodshed in an age that was far
■oo tempted to war in both conquest and defense.) The term
Manichaean and many of its major tenets and ideas lingered on,
:he vital spark carried by others.
Agapius (c. 450 A.D.) was one early religious teacher
•■•■ho attempted a fusion of Manichaeanism and orthodox
Christianity. He retained the Manichaean belief concerning an
Evil One, a self-subsistent force that is both eternal and
opposed to God. He urged rejection of the whole of the Old
64 Alfred Rosenberg

Testament on the grounds that it was filled with the lies and
deceit of the Jews. He, too, condemned earthly pleasures, sex
included. Yet he accepted in the traditional Nicaean doctrines
of the Trinity, the Incarnation, baptism for the remission of sins,
the Crucifixion, Resurrection and Final Judgment, and the
resurrection of the material and glorified body. His fusion,
while intriguing, historically has only its role as a link among
heterodox factions in the time chain to commend it.

The Paulicians

The Paulicians, too, served as a link between

Manichaeanism and the Cathars, from about 668 A.D. when the
cult was organized, until after 1200. The sect originated in
Armenia. In 869, Peter of Sicily wrote a blistering attack on the
Paulicians in his Historia Manichaeorum, and this is the first,
clear, dated reference we have to them. The origins of
Paulicianism are obscure. The teachings are traced by some
authorities to Paul and John of Samosota. The name may have
been derived from that Paul, or it may refer to the sect’s
devotion to ten letters of St. Paul (Saul). Others have traced it
to an attempt to belittle the movement as the "petty disciples of
Paul."
Initially, they espoused adoptionism. This heterodox
theology, held initially by Nestorians, taught that Christ was
merely a man who had been adopted as a son by God. It grew
in force in Spain through the efforts of Elipandus, bishop of
Toledo, c.785, from whence it spread to the middle east. Pope
Leo III condemned adoptionism in A.D.796, following its1
consideration and rejection by the Council of Frankfurt in 794.
The Paulicians slowly changed from adoptionism to cosmic
dualism, and with that change their power grew.
Publicly, the Paulicians rejected Manichaeanism, but
privately they adopted the gnostic dualism and many other of
 The Manichaean Heresy 65

its teachings. They rejected the Old Testament, viewing it as a

work of deception. They stated that it had been written by a
race of thieves and deceivers, and was inspired by the worship
of the false god, a demiurge, Jehovah.
They hated Jews on a second ground, as those who had
judged and condemned Christ. They stopped short of using the
term, "Christ killers" only because the Paulicians viewed the
Crucifixion as an illusion. They viewed Peter as a typical Jew
who, under pressure and in danger, had betrayed Christ and
bad denied him.
They attacked the traditional church on several grounds.
Clerical garb was the costume of Satan. They despised the
emphasis the Roman Church placed on Christ’s passion and
Crucifixion as these were either illusions or deliberate lies.
Christ could have had no physical body for bodies are made of
the corrupt matter of this world. His "body" was an illusion
offered to men as a convenient point of reference. Communion
*as an offering of material things, water or wine and bread, and
thus could not be holy. The true Eucharist, they taught, was in
Christ’s words and thoughts.
On the surface they appeared to be orthodox Christians,
for they made a distinction between things done on the surface
without meaning and those done privately within a select group
ind to which they attached special meaning. The Bible, even
the hated Old Testament, was accepted for exoteric use, while
the initiates used esoteric rites in private. They believed that
faith was the great guiding factor in attaining salvation (hence
their love for Paul). But they also believed that there were
certain hidden meanings and revealed words that the initiates
must know in order to escape forever from this corrupt material
world. These they shared in secret, in the clandestine services.
This special knowledge was to be given over to the care, and
for the use, of those who had accepted their gnostic religion.
In one area they differed from Manichaeanism. They
66 Alfred Rosenberg

were willing to fight and die. Much of their success came in

opposing the armies of the Byzantine and, later, the Bulgarian
empires. Their military state flourished, c.975, A.D., on the
Euphrates River. They also'forced conversions among their
enemies, spreading the word with the sword as well as with
preaching and argumentation. Perhaps their place in history was
secured more because of their fighting prowess than because of
their ideas. While they did not usually force conversion among
the peace loving, the mere sight of their powerful armies in the
field must have had a significant impact on the local population.
Their power peaked under Tychicus, c. 801-835 A.D., although
remnants remained active until at least 1200.

The Bogomili

Paulician and Manichaean ideas were fused in an

otherwise quite original movement which appeared in Bulgaria
about 950 A.D. Our only true point of reference is a notation
that they were first studied while Tsar Peter reigned in
Bulgaria. Peter died in 969. The Bogimili were a group of
initiates possessed of secret writings and ideas, whose name
indicates "God have mercy" or ’’Mercy of. God” or "Beloved of
God."
Their highly original theology began with the gnostic
dualism of matter as evil and spirit as good. In the story of the
Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) they found an allegory. Christ is
the good son who remained with the father and the devil is the
son who goes off to do evil. The devil (Satanel as the Bogomili
called him) was the son of God and the brother of Christ. The
"el" is a Hebrew suffix meaning "of God," thus, Satan which was
once of God.
A later Bogomil tale tells us more of the Bogomili
theology. The devil made the body of Adam. He tried to
animate it with a spark of the eternal (soul) which he had
 The Manichaean Heresy 67

uolen from God, but the soul would not remain in place. The
loul continually exited through the anus. Eventually, the devil
*■25 able to dam it up and even this tiny spark of soul was
sufficient to animate the body. The devil made the body from
water and earth.
In a second version of this story the water flowed out of
Adam’s toe and formed a stream, which appeared to Adam as
a snake. The snake tried to wam Adam of the deceit of Satanel,
*nd was thus cursed by him. Eventually, God and his prodigal
xm reached an accord: each would rule a part of man. God
was to govern what had been stolen from Him, the spirit of
can. The devil would govern that part he had made, the body.
To prevent the end of Satanel’s control over man
through his control of the material body, the devil must make
certain that the human race propagates. He thus uses sex as the
primary instrument of control. Without sex and procreation
there would be no future subjects for Satanel’s control. The true
believer had to reject sex, procreation, marriage and the family.
Only in this way could Satanel continue to gain subjects for his
rule of the material world. Satanel could win a victory over his
Creator only if fie had subjects in this world. When all spirit
was reunited with God, Satanel would lose his dominion.
The more informed and educated portion of the Bogomil
cult taught that messages were hidden in the Gospels, Acts of
the Apostles, and Epistles of Paul. One had to have key to
unlock the secrets. For reasons that are not clear, but perhaps
out of fear of the Jews, the vital messages in these writings were
presented in riddles, allegories and metaphors. The correct
interpretation of the materials was vital to salvation. Many
philosophers throughout history have maintained that, in times
of persecution, writers have concealed their true messages. Only
by understanding this to be true can we read materials prepared
in difficult times.
The Bogomili rejected the cross because it was a symbol
68 Alfred Rosenberg

of evil and persecution and suffering. On it the Jews had really

or symbolically crucified Christ. Even if one attempts to
reconcile the dualism which precludes Christ from having a
body with the hatred of the Jews as "Christ killers" one is left
with the idea in Bogomilism that the Jews had condemned
Christ along with His teaching. The Bogomili interpreted the
cross as symbolically representing that condemnation and
rejection.
The Bogomili made no distinction between priesthood
and laity. This group was a democratically-run organization with
no 'hierarchy, at least until about 1200, A.D. They were more
contemplative than Paulicians and more given to direct and
forceful action. Although they had a powerful military force
during most of their history, they did not attempt to create a
temporal regime.
The usual rejection of the sacraments marked
Bogomilism. Marriage leads to continued creation of material
bodies. Holy Communion is an attempt to do the impossible:
sanctify matter which is evil and cannot be blessed. They
rejected material holy relics, and formal churches for the same
reason.
The Phundagiagitae may be regarded as a form of
Bogomilism and, to a degree, Paulicianism. This new movement
was probably founded by John Tzurillas in Bulgaria about 1050,
and spread through Bulgaria and Byzantium. It was more
willing than the Bogomili to pay lip service to those artifacts
and doctrines of organized Orthodox Christianity. Its adherents
were hard to discover during the many persecutions of
heterodox Christians in both Bulgaria and Byzantium.
The Phundagiagitae were accused of being devil
worshippers, and of having a developed satanology. That
accusation probably came from a misunderstanding of their
interest in Satanel. Like their predecessors the Phundagiagitae
held that Satanel was a son of God and was the creator of this
 The Manichaean Heresy 69

■*’orld. God had created six heavens. Satanel had made the
remaining one. Satanel had tricked other devils (then angels)
into rebelling against God. Realizing that they had been tricked,
the other fallen angels set about to create a race of beings
which would help mankind. This they did by fathering a race of
pants by the daughters of men ["there were giants in the earth
in those days" Genesis 6:4],
Moses had led the Jews astray, the Phundagiagitae
irgued, by worshipping only Satanel, and in offering men the
law which was written by Satanel, not by God. Other men
rebelled, urged on by the giants who had been instructed by
their fathers. In retaliation, Satanel caused the Universal
Deluge which killed all but Noah who had remained loyal to
him. In this cult, very few of the Old Testament figures were
worthy of other than eternal damnation.
Satanel had stolen the spark from God which became
the spirit of man. This was represented metaphorically as the
light of the sun set against the eternal darkness of night in
Satanel’s realm. The spirit of man cried out for redemption so
God sent his son Jesus Christ to the rescue. After having saved
men, or that portion to whom he came and who received him,
Jesus returned to heaven. On the ascent he bound Satanel, and
removed from him the last vestige of his godliness, after which
the devil became Satan, the "el" having been appropriately
dropped. The "el", as we have seen, indicated "of God." The
teaching of Jesus was designed exclusively to liberate men from
Satanel and his servants on earth, the Jews, followers of the
teachings of Moses and Noah.

The Legacy of the Early Heretics

In the Myth of the 20th Century Alfred Rosenberg spent

much space discussing the . Cathars, also known as the
Albigensians or Pure Ones. He clearly preferred their brand of
70 Alfred Rosenberg

Christianity to the Roman Catholic version. They were the

carriers of the Manichaean tradition, as influenced by the
Bogomili, Paulicians and others, into Central Europe, in the
three years prior to the Reformation. Had the Cathars been
more militarily active and adept it would have been them, not
Luther and Calvin, who would have won the place in history as
the reformers of Christianity and the successful rebels against
the Church. As it was, they were successfully contained by the
Catholic Church and allied princes.
Some gnostics had made great use of Paul, but in a way
so highly symbolic that a fair statement of the situation might
be that they merely used Paul as a point of departure for their
esoteric ideas. Martin Luther placed even greater emphasis on
Paul. It is with Paul, especially a literal interpretation of Paul,
that Rosenberg had his greatest problem with Christianity. Had
it not been Paul, Rosenberg argued, Christianity would have
been as the "heretics" like the Bogomili, Manichaeans,
Paulicians, or Cathars. It would have rejected the Old
Testament, removed the Jews and their Jehovah, and founded
an anti-Jewish religion.

Bibliography

Angebert, Jean-Michel. The Occult and the Third Reich. New York, 1974.
Borst, A. Die Katharer. Stuttgart, 1953.
Broeckx, E. Le Catharisme. Hoogstraten, 1916.
Brooke, Christopher. "Heresy and Religious Sentiment, 1000-1250’ in C.
Brooke (ed.) Medieval Church and Society. New York, 1972.

Brown, Peter. "St. Augustine’s Attitude to Religious Coercion," 54 Journal of

Roman Studies (1964), pp. 107- 16.
______ . Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine. New York, 1972.
Conybcare, F.G. (ed., intro.). The Key of Truth (Oxford, 1898). This is
allegedly a Manichaean work that had been lost and now
rediscovered. Many disagree with Conybeare’s introduction.
Cumont, F. Recherches sur le manich&sme. Paris, 1908.
 The Cathars

The Cathar theology was quite diverse. The common

factor among the many groups called "Cathar" is opposition to
the established church. It is virtually impossible to catalogue
and systematize them. There was no single wellspring of Cathar
thought. Movements for reform touched all aspects of medieval
life. There was much in the church that needed reform.
Reformers and reform movements grew and were often either
checked by the church for real or supposed heterodox views or
they fell into moral laxity themselves. The inquisitors who
tortured and questioned real or suspected Cathar heretics saw
far greater homogeneity than was the case in reality. Most of
what we know about the Cathars came from records of the
Inquisition.
We find the Cathars by about 1025 A.D., in Germany,
Italy and France, and spreading to England and Flanders.
Originally the established church called the heretics simply "the
new Manichaeans." The church sent the Holy Inquisition to
weed out the recurrent heresy. Although there were prominent
and powerful Cathars supporters, especially in Languedoc, the
Cathars appealed first and foremost to the common people.
These uneducated laymen and women were hardly able to
match theological arguments with the select, trained inquisitors
of the established church. It is likely that under torture many
orthodox Christians succumbed to pain, fear and theological
entrapment. No book similar to the (ancient Armenian?) Key
to Truth has, to date, been discovered, translated and
disseminated to explain the Cathar side of the controversy over
their doctrines. Last, we must note that the Cathar heresy
existed clearly for more than two centuries and it had no
central authority similar to the papacy to set doctrine
universally.
There are many legends about the founders of the
Cathar heresy, but no single figure or group can be credited
72 Alfred Rosenberg

with the development and spread of Catharism. Gerbert of

Aurillac, Archbishop of Reims in 991 made a declaration of
principles which were decidedly gnostic and Manichaean, but he
cannot be said to have led or encouraged the spread of Cathar
religion. In 1028 William V, Duke of Aquitaine, summoned a
council of bishops to deal with the heresy, and there it was held
that it had spread northward from Italy. Ademar of Chabannes
believed that a certain woman and another peasant had carried
the doctrine into France, perhaps from Italy. Modern
scholarship suggests that a portion of it, at least, came from
Bulgaria, Armenia, and/or the Byzantine Empire. Another
portion came out of the Moslem Empire, where there was an
unusual tolerance for strange gnostic sects. Guibert of Nogent
wrote of "Manichees" practicing their religion at Soissons in
1114. Saint Bernard wrote of their doctrine in his Sermon on the
Song of Songs.
The Cathars were clearly dualists in the classical
Manichaean sense. The earliest references to them state that
there was. a new outbreak of the Church’s old nemesis,
Manichaeanism. Intermittently thereafter the Cathars were
called Manichaean. Authorities have not decided, based ont he
available testimony, whether the Cathar dualism was of
traditionally opposed eternal gods, or whether it was of the
monarchical type. There may have been shades of each heresy
existing simultaneously. The monarchical dualism suggests that
the power of evil is a being in all ways inferior to God, and that
evil force will disappear when the material world ends.
Traditional dualism, based in some part on the teachings of the
Persian sage Zarathustra (Zoroaster) suggests that there are
two equally eternal and powerful beings, one good and one evil.
The Cathars accepted the usual limited scriptural
writings, and excluded the bulk of the Old Testament. Several
books of the Old Testament, to which the New Testament
referred often, were retained, notably the Psalms. Jehovah of
 The Cathars 73

•.he Jews was dismissed as being either an incarnation or form

jf Satan, or as being merely a world artificer and not God.
They gave esoteric interpretations to Scripture, including
□inscription against the eating of meat. The portions of the
X'ew Testament which did not suit their purposes were
removed, usually with the justification that these had been
-dded by the Jews to confuse or confound the faithful.
There was a significant distinction made between, the
Perfects and the laity within Catharism. The laity were those
vho were learning the true Christianity. They could marry, or
continue to live in wedlock, if they wished. The initiates who
had taken the final vows of the cult could not have sexual
intercourse or live in a family environment. The training period
often lasted several years or even a decade or more. Many
Cathars held off taking the vows until they were near death, so
that they were not obliged to follow the much stricter moral
code required of the Perfects.
Ilie great sacrament of the Cathar religion was the
Consolamentum. It was held in the home of a Perfect or a
sympathizer. The sacrament began with a communal confession
of sins and failures called the Servitium. All those present,
Perfects or followers, participated. A senior Perfect held aloft
a copy of the approved Scripture. The transcriptions of what the
ceremony consisted of have come down to us, and as reported
contain nothing that is shocking to, or antithetical to, orthodox
Christianity. The closest it came to heresy was the emphasis
placed on the sins one could commit of a material type, notably
the sins of the flesh.
The candidate’s initiation into the final rite of the
Perfects was reasonably simple. It was flavored with writings
from the accepted Church fathers and the edited Scripture.
Primarily it consisted of the rejection of things which were
offensive to the group’s ethic. They were not to lie, cheat or
swear. The Roman Catholic Church alleged that it was at this
74 Alfred Rosenberg

point that the rejection of all things Catholic took place. The
catechumen was reminded that here, before God, he swore
eternal allegiance to his religion. Doubtless, he was required to
renounce the Sacraments, since these were tied to the material
world, and several canons of faith.
The Cathars drank no wine, and they objected to Holy
Communion on the ground that nothing material could be made
holy or purified in the sight of God. This is standard in anti-
cosmic, gnostic dualism. Confession was an open affair, and not
made to the priest. The cross was most objectionable, on the
traditional heterodox theological ground that it was the symbol
of Christ’s passion, even though they generally believed that
Christ had no body and only appeared to suffer. The fact that
the Jews sought to crucify and condemn Jesus was sufficient
reason to hate the cross, even if Christ was not actually
crucified.
Some Cathars appeared to be Adoptionists. This faction
believed that a man like any of us, but a Gentile [i.e., a non­
Jew) had been born, out of the flesh of Mary. He was fathered
probably by Joseph and was not born of a virgin. Jesus was not
born of one eternally exempted from sin. This to say that the
Adoptionists rejected the doctrine of the Immaculate
Conception. At the time of the baptism by John, when God
spoke the words "This is my beloved son in whom I am well
pleased [Matthew 3:17]," Jesus was transfixed or possessed by
God. The "adoption" remained through the crucifixion, and
possibly God removed himself from the man either at the
Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross ("My God! My God!
Why hast thou forsaken me?" [Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34]). Most
among those accepting Adoptionism believed that the man, not
the man-God, was crucified.
Probably the mainstream Cathars believed that God had
not, and could not, become flesh, because flesh is material and
thus corrupt. He only appeared to men to have’ a body, as a
 The Cathars 75

convenience to men to see him. That point of view had a

secondary benefit: it precluded having to be concerned with
whether Christ was a Jew. That was a problem of some
considerable concern for a group which had a fully rejected
Judaism and the writings, prophets, thoughts, and laws of the
Old Testament.
Traditional teachings on Heaven, hell and Purgatory
<ere unacceptable to the Cathars. Earth, as the material world
of the Devil and corruption, was a kind of hell. Only those who
renounced the flesh and Satan could be assumed into Heaven.
The Consolamentum was the purgation of the evil and
corruption from man, that is, the de-materialization of man.
Thus, there was no need for a second place in which this
deansing could occur. That is to say, most believers among the
Cathars denied the doctrine of Purgatory. Likewise, there was
□o need to pray for the dead [2 Macc. 12: 44-45]. Some of the
dead had made it to the Heaven, thus escaping the corruption
of the material world. These needed no help from the living.
Others continued to have their spirits entrapped in the world.
None of the works consulted on Catharism have taken
up the question of reincarnation, but it seems to be a logical
consequence of the religion. If a soul was not able to escape
matter, would it not be forced to return to try again? Or was
it that a soul which failed to rise from the material world in
that single attempt of the lifetime spent here was eternally
trapped in matter in some way? The idea of spirit entrapped
in matter strongly suggests that spirit must try time and again
to escape, for the union of matter and spirit is an impossibility.
This dilemma must be solved, for it is an essentially unstable
combination.
One might also ask if it was necessary to the Cathars to
believe that all men had his spark of the Eternal God. This
question is not taken up in the extant sources either. One
legend suggested that Satan invaded the celestial abode
76 Alfred Rosenberg

sufficiently well enough to capture one-third of the spirits living

there. These he entrapped in earthly bodies. However, the
legend does not state clearly that this number was sufficient to
account for all mankind. This, precisely, is the major problem
in the Cathar teachings: they spoke in myths, parables and
legends. Not infrequently . various factions contradicted
themselves.
Except in a highly symbolic sense, the Virgin Mary had
no role in the Cathar teachings. Some held that she was a virgin
and others held that she was merely a woman who had given
birth to many children, including one adopted by God. She was
a symbol for the Church in its most abstract form. One faction
held that Mary was a vehicle through which an eon [demi-urge]
passed on its way to earth; and a variance allowed Christ to
have passed through her, but through her ear, not through the
usual birth route.
The Inquisition accused the Cathars of being pantheists.
In a spiritual sense, something of God may be said to be
present in all things. Conversely, nothing material could house
God because all material reality was evil in Cathar theology.
The Cathars rejected Holy Communion because God was the
antithesis of materialist diversity and multiplicity. God was
single and simple and perfect. The Cathars generally responded
to questions about God’s presence in Church or in Communion
by saying that God was no more present there than anywhere
else.
Some Cathars evidently believed that God, being all­
powerful, could enter matter, or take on the appearance of
matter, at will, to deceive the Devil and rescue the Men of
Light from their material prisons. Thus, at any given time, God
may be present in any apparently material thing, to appear to
all, Satan included, as a material thing.
The Cathars inverted the moral standing of most of the
beings named in the Old Testament. Jehovah, the Jewish God,
 The Cathars 77

was both an evil and a false god, a form of Satan (or Satan
incarnate). Abraham and Moses were inspired by the Devil.
The various characters who destroyed, or who had a hand in
destroying, the original inhabitants of Canaan to obtain the
'land of milk and honey" were condemned.
The Cathars transvaluated some familiar figures of the
New Testament. John the Baptist was evil because he baptized
in water (i.e., a material thing) instead of baptizing in the spirit.
They were ambivalent on Saul (Saint Paul), with a few
accepting him and his epistles and others rejecting his theology.
Some Cathars accepted only Saint Luke whom they believed to
bs a Gentile.
Cathar beliefs prospered in a Europe that was tired of
the corruptions of the established church. Rome, seat of the
papacy, was the worst offender in Christendom. Popes had
taxed the clergy throughout Europe to finance a massive
building program. More offensively, popes had lavished huge
sums of money on their personal entertainment. The papacy
used money to influence politics throughout the continent. It
Snanced crusades against non-believers (notably Islam) and
heterodox Christians. To acquire funds sufficient for its
purposes, the papacy instituted a series of devices to squeeze
even more money from the hungry peasants. Jubilee years
encouraged pilgrims to visit Rome. Travelling circuses carried
real or faked artifacts of Christendom, charging the faithful an
admission fee to view these "holy" items. Some roving preachers
peddled indulgences which remitted punishment due for sins.
The Cathar movement grew in northern Italy, southern
France and into Germany. Its sects were strongest in Languedoc
and northern Italy. The Church sent in its most experienced
preachers to counter the attractions of Manichaeanism. In the
mid-twelfth century, Peter the Venerable and Saint Bernard
were its most successful representatives. The Church had only
78 Alfred Rosenberg

temporary success with caritas. Relapses in church discipline

and continued abuses neutralized the best preaching efforts.
It was difficult to raise a campaign against the Cathars
for a variety of reasons. Its adherents were generally men and
women of the highest moral character. Their lives were
singularly free of sin and corruption. The Perfects asked for
nothing more than simple shelter and basic food. Many of the
leaders were women. The consolamentum was not restricted as
to gender. Many Perfects were women, including the mothers,
sisters and wives of potential crusaders. Orthodox Catholic
families were frequently closely related to Cathars. To wage war
against the Cathars meant to wage war against one’s own
relatives.
By the mid-thirteenth century the Church was prepared
to use full force against the heretics and a crusade was
sanctioned. In 1212 Simon de Montfort entered into the
Albigensian Crusade. By 1244 the last major Cathar stronghold
at Montsegur in France had fallen. The siege had been long
and bitter and ranks among the classics of medieval siege
warfare. The Perfects, at least 300 in number, chose to die by
immolation at the stake rather than relinquish their beliefs.
Some of those who did not take the consolamentum repented
of their heresy and were taken back into the Church. The field
on which so many were burnt is still recalled and marked.
While there have been authors who claimed that the Cathars
were contained by theological and philosophical reason,
argument, logic and preaching, most scholars have concluded
that the Cathars were defeated by two factors: the Holy
Inquisition and the Crusade.
Despite the major challenge the Cathars presented to
orthodox Christianity, the Church and the papacy had learned
little. The underlying economic and social conditions that had
supported the heresy were as much present after 1250 as
before. The preachers who had helped to turn many
 The Cathars 79

-ympathizers back to the bosom of Holy Mother the Church

’■ere replaced by lesser talents. Corruption among local clergy
.'ontinued. The Holy See at Rome encouraged or at least
Xrmitted the revival of the offensive practices of simony,
celling of indulgences, Roman jubilees and display of alleged
■Joly relics. The failure to reform cost the Church dearly when
’.he next round of heterodox theology was advanced.

Rosenberg and Gnosticism

The Cathars served as a convenient take-off point for

Alfred Rosenberg’s attack on both the Catholic Church and on
Judaism. It is impossible to say whether his disdain for these
wo powerful institutions flowed from a general dislike of them,
or from his analysis of their doctrine or their history. Perhaps
h was a combination of the two factors. There are many
references throughout the Myth of the Twentieth Century to both
groups. He concluded that both the Catholic Church and the
Jews had been responsible for the corruption of Christianity and
of God’s true message.
One may assume that Rosenberg’s constant favorable
reference to the Cathars suggests that he believed they
possessed the key to true Christianity. They may not have been
perfect, wholly uncorrupted Christianity, but they were closer
than any other extant or known religion to the truth. Rosenberg
insisted throughout his writings and speeches that he was a
Christian. He criticized the Roman Church on the ground that
rhe Reformation had not gone far enough. The Calvinists had
started in the right direction, but had faltered.
After the fall of the last Cathar stronghold, in October
1244 A.D. at Montsegur, a few of the group made it through
the Roman Catholic lines and carried off the treasures. Among
these was reputed to be a Holy Grail, and on it the initiate
knowledge the Cathar gnosticism required for salvation. This is
80 Alfred Rosenberg

the great theme of both Ravenscroft’s books, and of the

Angebert’s The Occult and the Third Reich. Otto Rahn’s Crusade
Against the Grail, published during the pre-war years, suggests
that the location of the greatest of the Cathar treasures was
known. Possibly, too, the SS had located long lost books of
Cathar theology, or books showing the esoteric Cathar
interpretation of the New Testament books they accepted. The
SS may have located the Cathar commentaries on books long
used by Manichaean sects, including apocryphal books like the
Book of Enoch, the Book of Adam and Eve, The Gospel of
Thomas, or the Childhood of Jesus.
Ravenscroft believed that the spear of Longinius had
long before been located, in Vienna, at the treasure-house of
the hereditary Austrian kings. The spear, as he calls it in his
book title, The Spear of Destiny, was a talisman of power in and
of itself He suggested, but did not clearly state, that it may be
much more.
Of what did the Cathar treasure consist? More to the
point, of what did Rosenberg believe it would consist? And
what of that material did Rosenberg study and consider?
Presumably, Ravenscroft and Angebert, in researching their
books, spent much time in considering answers to these
questions. Both agree that Hitler and the National Socialists
possessed the Spear. Neither author is evidently willing to
commit to the Nazis’ possession any other specific object or
writing. One might even ask if, indeed, the Cathars had a
treasure, and, if they did, if any of it has survived.
Angebert’s The Occult and the Third Reich suggests that
a substantial portion of what the SS gathered on religion was
put into use by the SS under Heinrich Himmler and that a
special stronghold had been provided Himmler for the express
purpose of indoctrinating select SS leaders in the new cult.
Pauwels and Bergier, whose work, Morning of the Magician, is
noteworthy for the wild statements made without any
 The Cathars 81

documentation, say that a black ritual devoted to Satan worship,

ind based, in part, on Cathar theology, was offered to certain
SS officers. The Black Order was to be devoted to black magic,
demonology and all sorts of evil things. Ravenscroft believed
that Hitler was a black magician and master of many of the
occult sciences.
One might point out that similar charges had been
brought against the Cathars, and without proof of their truth.
The Cathars had offered a whole new interpretation of
Christianity and had suffered burning at the stake and other
painful martyrdoms. Until the documents which still may exist
are released, we can only say that it is within the context of
Rosenberg’s published works that he studied what was available
on the Cathars, and perhaps other medieval Manichaeans, and
that the ideas as he understood them were to be the basis for
his reconstituted Christianity.
The Roman Catholic Church acted swiftly, and for the
first time in many centuries attacked a specific work,
Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century, in an encyclical
entitled Mit Brennender Sorge [BWi Greatest Sorrow}. The
issuance of an encyclical in the vernacular was itself more than
slightly irregular and indeed noteworthy. The Roman Catholic
Church has also taken the position of exonerating the Jews for
especial guilt in the death of Christ, placing the blame more
universally on all humankind. That action has taken place since
the Myth of the Twentieth Century was written and, to some
considerable degree, the encyclical may be viewed as the
Church’s specific and official reaction to Rosenberg and the
National Socialist position.

Bibliography

John F. Benton (cd.). Self and Society in Medieval France. New York, 1970.
Guiraud, J. Histoirc de I’inquisilion au moyen Age. Paris, 1935-38.
82 Alfred Rosenberg

Haunedouche, Simone. Manicheisme ct catharisme. Cahiers d'etudes cathares,

1967.
Jonas, Hans. The Gnostic Religion Beacon, 1963.
Lambert, MaJcolm. Medieval Heresy. New York, 1977.
Moore, RJ.. The Origins of European Dissent. New York, 1975.
______ . "The Origins of Medieval Heresy/ 55 History (1970), pp. 21-36
______ . The Birth of Popular Heresy. New York, 1976.
Mustard, Helen M. and Charles E. Passage (eds.). Parzival: A Romance of
the Middle Ages. New York, 1961.
Obolensky, Dmitri. The Bogomils. Cambridge University, 1948.
Pauwels, Louis and Jacques Bergicr. Morning of the Magician. Paris, 1960.
Peters, Edward. Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe. Philadelphia, 1980.
Ravenscroft, Trevor. The Cup of Destiny. York Beach, Maine, 1982.
______ . The Spear of Destiny. New York, 1973.
Runciman, Steven, The Medieval Manichee. Cambridge, 1955.
Russell, Jeffrey B. Religious Dissent in the Middle Ages. New York, 1971.
______ . "Interpretations of the Origins of Medieval Heresy," 25 Medieval
Studies (1963), pp. 26-53.
Schmidt, C. Histoire des Cathars et Albigeois. Paris, 1849.
H J. Schroeder (cd.). Disciplinary Decrees of the General Church Councils. St.
Louis, 1937.
Soderberg, H. La Religion des Cathars. Uppsala, 1949.
______ . Dissent and Reform in the Early Middle Ages. Berkeley, Ca., 1965.
Sumption, Jonathan. The Albigensian Crusade. Boston, 1978.
Wakefield, Walter and A.P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages. New
York, 1969.
Walter L. Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France.
Berkeley, 1974.
Wakefield, Walter and Austin P. Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages.
New York, 1969.
Weston, Jessie L. (editor). Parzival: A Knightly Legend by Wolfram von
Eschenback. 2 volumes. London, 1894.
 Meister Eckhart

Mysticism in Alfred Rosenberg’s thought began with

Meister Eckhart, There were many earlier mystics, most
considered to be heretics, or at least viewed with considerable
suspicion, by the Roman Catholic Church. Joachim of Flores
(c. 1135-1202) was a Cistercian mystic who developed a complex
Trinitarian philosophy of history. There were three ages of the
•»orld, each connected to one of the Blessed Trinity, with
corresponding religious characteristics. His teachings inspired
many of the poverty loving sects in the next several hundred
years; and several generations of mystics whose interest lay in
use second coming of Christ and the fulfillment of the
apocalyptic vision of John in the Book of Revelations. Angela
of Foligno (c.1248-1309) was a devout mystic who was the
subject of visions and special revelations. So exhausting were
these experiences that she was frequently mute and motionless
for eight days after. Her Book of Visions and Instructions was
designed to instruct those interested in taking the twenty steps
of penitence which might lead one to the mystical life. Ubertino
de Casale (1259-C.1330) was influenced by mystics such as
Angela of Foligno, John of Parma and Joachim of Flores.
Ubertino was best known for his bitter attacks on the corrupt
clergy and for his love of poverty. Pope John XXII sought to try
him on charges of heresy, but was unable to locate him. None
of these figures seems to have been known to Alfred
Rosenberg, but they certainly constituted the source of
Eckhart’s mysticism.
Of those major figures discussed at length in Alfred
Rosenberg, especially those who are significant for their
contributions to theology, Meister Eckhart is the least known.
Johannes Eckhart was born in Hochheim, near Gotha,
Germany, about 1260, a son of a steward in a knight’s castle.
When he was about fifteen years of age he entered the
84 Alfred Rosenberg

Dominican Monastery at Erfurt and began a nine year program

of study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. He moved to
Cologne to continue his studies. The medieval master and
mentor of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, taught at
Cologne until his death in 1280. It is possible that Albertus, the
"Universal Doctor," taught Eckhart.
In 1300 Eckhart was Prior of Erfurt and Vicar of
Thuringia, a position of considerable power and influence.
Although Eckhart was himself a mystic, he practiced his
mysticism within the Church. Among the challenges he faced in
his position of power and responsibility was the spread of
heresy, notably of the mystic type, operating outside of, and in
opposition to, the Church. The Friends of God, the Beghards,
the Beguines and other radical groups challenged the corruption
within the Church and disputed major points of theology.
Eckhart’s reputation as a preacher and defender of the faith,
and his personal piety and integrity, earned him a wide
audience within his charge.
Shortly after 1300 Eckhart moved to Paris, there to earn
Licentiate and Master of Arts degrees in 1302. After receiving
the second degree he was known as Meister [Master] Eckhart
for the remainder of his life. In 1303 he was appointed
Provincial of the Dominican order in Saxony. This charge
included nearly all of middle and lower Germany. In 1307 he
became vicar of Bavaria, adding yet more of his homeland to
his responsibility. This was to be his last elevation. In 1309 he
was nominated for the position of Superior of the Dominican
Province of Germany, but the Pope did not confirm the
promotion. He then made a second visit to Paris. By 1313 he
was Prior of the Dominicans at Strassburg. About 1320 he was
appointed professor of theology at the Dominican College of
Cologne.
On 24 January 1327 he was ordered to appear at the
court of the Archbishop of Cologne to answer a number of
 Meister Eckhart 85

charges of teaching and preaching doctrines that were in error

and that were antithetical to the truths held by the Church. On
13 February 1327 he appeared in Cologne, but as a preacher,
not as an accused heretic. He offered to debate any specific
item on the list of alleged heresies. Were he to be proved
wrong on any count he would retract his errors and recant.
The public, no doubt, hoped that a great debate would
occur. Eckhart was enormously popular with the public. In
medieval times the debate of theological matters was a pleasant
diversion. The "disputed questions" were listed and the positions
of the debaters were avidly followed. There was little interest
at the time in political questions simply because monarchy
reigned and citizen-based political participation was unknown.
But the debate did not occur, perhaps because of Eckhart’s
reputation and perhaps because of his following among the
prospective audience.
While in Frankfort Eckhart was charged with heresy for
allegedly being in a league with the Beghards and the Brothers
of the Free Spirit, both of which the Roman Catholic Church
considered heretical. He aroused the enmity especially of the
Archbishop of Cologne. Initially vindicated before a papal
tribunal, Eckhart was rearrested and tried by the Archbishop’s
special Inquisition. He was then forced to retire to teaching in
Cologne where he died.
The final disposition of Eckhart’s case came some two
years later after his death. In 1330 a special papal commission
whose verdict is said to have been reviewed personally by the
pope found him suspect of heresy. More precisely, the clerics
assembled by the pope to examine his work found 28 of his
propositions to be heretical, leaning toward pantheism.
Seventeen of these ideas were clearly contrary to Catholic
teaching and eleven were held to be dangerous to the faith of
believing Christians.
The Church continued to pursue Eckhart. On 22
86 Alfred Rosenberg

February 1327 Pope John XXII officially denied Eckhart’s

direct appeal. By 27 March 1329 John XXII made reference to
Eckhart, noting that he was dead. On 27 March 1329 John.
XXU announced that Eckhart had, before his death, retracted
his erroneous teachings and acknowledged his grievous errors.
There is little doubt that this statement was a fabrication. The
noble lie allowed the Church to condemn those of Eckhart’s
teachings which it did not like while continuing to praise the
man who had become a saint in the popular mind.
The papal bull determined that Eckhart had denounced
his errors before dying, but there is no evidence that was so.
The bull also noted Eckhart’s willingness to submit any and all
of his writings to the Holy See for its approbation. This is
partially true. Eckhart defended with great vigor those ideas
said to be pantheistic by the commission, but he did stand ready
to retract whatever ideas he advanced that could be shown in
fair debate to be in error. He generally defended himself by
saying that his ideas were misrepresented, contents were taken
out of context and that more was read out of them than he had
intended. He had the force of conviction which could be
overturned by a superior logic, but he stood ready to accept or
reject any ideas, including his own, on their intrinsic merit and
logic. Eckhart advanced ideas which then might be read and
discussed by superior minds which were open to the truth. Even
if compelled by threat of Church discipline including
excommunication to recant and withdraw, his ideas were still
available to such scholars as wished to examine them and
decide the issues for themselves. Eckhart favored only that
ultimate power of the world, logic; he disliked the arbitrary
coercive power of church and state in the vital area of the
freedom of conscience.
The cult died out rather quickly. His following proved to
be fickle and gave its attention to others. The Church was
delighted • to forget the controversial preacher whose
 Meister Eckhart 87

controversial teachings had proved to be so popular. The

Church was content to allow history to record that Eckhart had
been deceived and seduced by the Devil. His teachings had
been posthumously condemned and there was no reason to
encourage additional devotion to Eckhart.
It would be easy to name Eckhart as a spiritual and
theological father of the Reformation in Germany, but
scholarship universally disagrees with this conclusion. The
contemporary mystics led by Tauler and Suso, leaders of the
Friends of God, had clear and definite influence on later
Protestant movements, notably, Calvinism, the Anabaptists and
Society of Friends. But we must recall that Eckhart had
opposed the teachings of the other, radical mystics, and that he
also opposed reformation of theology and corruption through
any method except those situated within the Church. He had no
quarrel with the ecclesiastical establishment. He recognized
quite clearly "dangerous mysticism" which led humans away
from the true Church. Eckhart was able to reconcile his
mysticism with the teachings of the Church, but others, less
brilliant and less educated, were unable to create a satisfactory
synthesis.
Meister Eckhart was a scholar of the first rank. The
number of authorities he cites is amazing. It is a veritable who’s
who of the known theologians and philosophers that was
available to medieval man. Authorities were used only as
springboards for his own ideas. As a product of scholastic
education he was used to making fine distinctions, and of
dealing with highly abstract concepts. He applied his thought to
one thing only. He wished to lead the common man to God. He
preferred to demonstrate the great truths of the Godhead
rather than condemn and punish those whose ideas differed
from his own. Truth would win if properly stated, and Eckhart
offered his own conclusions, richly illustrating these truths with
his own mystical experience.
88 Alfred Rosenberg

Eckhart had taught that man’s relation to God began

with and in the soul. There was something divine within the
soul of each human being, called grund, a spark of the
Godhead. Humans could fly to God and unite with Him in a
timeless and will-less state of ecstasy, love and contemplation.
All truths were already contained within the human soul; or, as
the Gospel says, "The Kingdom of God is within." In each soul
we find something that was not created, a tiny particle of the
uncreated and the divine.
Without that spark of the Godhead humans were
nothing. Nothing but God truly exists. Every human trait is but
an accident attached to that tiny spark of the divine, in the
sense that Aristotle taught substance and accidents. As Eckhart
taught, "All that is not God might not exist Creatures of
themselves are pure nothings." (Defense, IX, 30 & 46].
Humans are not God, but they are tied to God, and God
to them. Metaphorically, God’s blood flows within our bodies.
The Church had taught that the faithful might partake of God
in the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist and the Precious Blood.
No preacher had taken so seriously this physical tie between
Creator and creature.
The medieval mind had long sought to define God. St.
Anselm had written of a God which is that greater than which
can be conceived. No doubt this definition influenced Eckhart
who yearned for a "God who is more than God." There were
other limitations. He cannot be defined. "It is God’s nature to
be without a nature." [Fragments, 30], God is evidently less than
Truth. 'Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside
from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go." [Fragments,
18]. God cannot choose when, where and how to give grace. "If
I am pure, God must give Himself and dwell in me ..."
[Fragments, 8].
The soul of man is central to his relationship to God.
God is the "tireless lover of the soul." The inner spark of the
 Meister Eckhart 89

soul seeks to dominate man’s personality. Whenever man gives

up his outer self for the sake of the spark of God in his soul he
moves ever closer to God. Man comes to know God as the
Creator and as the Father of all things. He becomes his true
self only when he denies his material being. He must pray in
general terms, for union with God. When he looks for material
things and asks for material prosperity in this life he is praying
to the world and not to God.
The soul is home to a divine spark which is a part of
God. Eckhart sought here within the soul proof of the existence
of God. Man demands to know that God exists, but he cannot
know of His existence beyond his self. Man can know God only
from within, by examining the spark of God in the soul. This is
the intellectual and spiritual basis of Protestantism. More
important to Rosenberg was the use of Eckhart’s ideas as a
basis of the Nordic Church that the Nazis espoused.
Rosenberg wrote an essay on Eckhart, Die Religion des
Meister Eckehart [Munich, 1934], which was really an expanded
essay taken from The Myth of the 20th Century. He considered
Eckhart to have been an heroic, anti-Roman Catholic religious
reformer of the first rank. The creation of the German national
church was the product of neither the Reformation nor the
Renaissance; it was the product of Eckhart’s discoveries.
Eckhart was "the greatest Apostle of the Nordic West, who gave
us our religion." [Myth, p.219]. He was the German who
discovered God within his own self. With that discovery he
founded the true Nordic Church. He was the first German to
teach the primacy of the soul and the desire of the soul to be
one with the Godhead. The Nordic soul was capable of
unfolding unto itself and revealing to man his true self and
God. His church was stripped of its Jewish and its "Syrian"
roots.
Rosenberg liked the emphasis Eckhart placed on the
soul and the special relationship that existed between man and
90 Alfred Rosenberg

the soul. Eckhart had argued that no church was genuine that
prevented the soul from unfolding or which prevented man
from knowing his soul. As Rosenberg saw it, the real reason
that corrupt Pope John XXII had charged Eckhart with heresy,
was that Eckhart had taught the Nordic principle of self-
determination of the soul. Eckhart knew the pure German soul
well through the process of self-examination. God can be "bom"
only in a totally free soul. The proud Nordic soul faced God as
an equal because it was of and from God. As Rosenberg wrote,
Tn place of the Jewish-Roman Weltanschauung Eckhart
envisions the Nordic-Western soul-religion, as the center of
Germanic man, of the Nordic race." [Myth, p.252].
Traditional organized religion, Rosenberg reasoned, was
of no use to Eckhart. The soul was sufficient in and of itself. As
the equal of God. because it was a spark of the Godhead it
determined the self-sufficient man. Eckhart separated the soul
from any and all extraneous things. Perhaps other races lacked
the "proud Nordic soul. For these inferior souls Roman
Christianity, with its emphasis on humility and self-sacrifice, was
the appropriate religion. Rosenberg concluded that what
Eelchart had written for all souls applied only to the Nordic
race. Nordic man with his pure soul was nothing less than the
quintessence of the German character. He had the attributes of
honor and inner strength.
It is true that ideas of humility, mercy, kindness, charity
and other good works were of little interest to Eckhart. Love
was not traditional charity; it was strength of soul in union with
God. He respected the ability of the pure soul to demolish all
obstacles in pursuit of the Godhead.
Grace, so vital in Luther’s thought, did not rank high for
Eckhart. For Rosenberg this was one more proof that Eckhart
had denied the Jewish roots of Roman Christianity. Grace was
alien to Germanic thinking. It was tied to the inferior concepts
of subservience and slavery. It came from Saints Paul and
 Meister Eckhart 91

Augustine who were much given to thoughts of tormented souls

writhing in hell fire and punished with eternal damnation
because they had failed to be God’s good servants. Rosenberg
had little use for Paul because he was a leading Jew. He had
little more good to say about Augustine because of his African
origins. Rosenberg, like many other Germans, suspected that
Augustine was of mixed racial heritage.
To Rosenberg the institution of the papacy and its
associated teachings were remnants of the mystical near eastern
civilizations, products of Jewish and related peoples. As such,
these were antithetical to the German spirit. Rosenberg argued
that Eckhart had been the first to discover that the bases of the
Nordic Church were northern European. The Church in
Germany had made a grievous error by denying the myths of
the Germans while accepting the Jewish and Syrian myths. The
Jews and the Syrians did not comprehend the soul of Nordic
peoples. They could not understand the human soul and its
flight to the Godhead because they were bound to the material
earth.
Rosenberg saw the Manichaean conclusions about
Roman Christianity being repeated in Eckhart. The "Syrian-
Jewish" conclusions about man and the human soul were
inappropriate for proud Nordic man.
Meister Eckhart had taught that Nordics should look
inwardly, toward that freedom of the spirit that cannot coexist
with creationism. He was silenced and his works placed On the
Roman Index of Forbidden Books which Catholics could not
read under the penalty of mortal sin. Because the Roman
Church claimed the power to "bind" on earth, they could
commit God to punish those who violated its precepts, including
the Index.
Eckhart was not speaking anew when he wrote of the
"inner light of the soul which is both unoriginated and
uncreatable." God did not grant freedom to man; this is an
92 Alfred Rosenberg

Asiatic lie. The freedom of the soul is a fact of being (Dasein);

a grant from God would be a different type of form of being
(Sosein). This doctrine that man has a special relationship with
God as a being co-existing with God from all eternity comes
from the most ancient Aryan texts. Eckhart, as a true, deeply
religious, dedicated Nordic man of God could feel both his
religion by ascending to God and know the racial truths of his
people. By looking inward with a true and courageous heart,
Eckhart’s man was able to soar toward God.
Eckhart had declared that there were three elements
that demonstrated that one had a nobility of soul. First, a man
had to possess a "glory of being" that he also described as a
"heavenly agent." Secondly, the noble soul had a potency known
nowhere else in all of creation. Third, it was known by the
fecundity of its works. Before it could enter the real world it
had to come to know its "unique beauty" of substance and
contents. According to Rosenberg, these items showed that
Eckhart had a Nordic soul.
Rosenberg’s Nordic man and Eckhart’s superior soul
both approach the world as beings (Dasein) who have certain
values, most notably the supreme virtue of honor. From honor
one shows obedience to duty, a sense of obligation in his
relationships with others and an honesty of character. In short,
one prepares his soul in the inner depths of his mind, in the
recesses of his being, and he then wears such virtues as he
developed visibly, for all the world to see. Virtues are not
abstract conceptions to be discussed in theoretical dialogues;
they are, instead, preparations for concrete action. Rosenberg
wrote of Greek warriors who fretted over an impending battle
because they had not prepared spiritually for the engagement,
just as Eckhart had written of religious men who had worried
over receiving sacraments because they had not adequately
prepared. Nordic man, Rosenberg argued, would have made
preparations early as a natural part of preparing his soul for
 Meister Eckhart 93

■fe- The man of honor might die for honor or principle, but
•ch is an iron law of necessity. If one is to live honorably he
«st be totally willing to die honorably. There is no alternative.
One who has philosophically prepared his soul is ready
» ascend to heaven, both figuratively and literally. The inner
trsk of reaching for the kingdom of heaven can be undertaken
•cly when the soul is free. The search for that freedom of
character and of soul is a highly individualistic quest. One’s
•acial history can help and it can impel one to begin the search,
hut it cannot make the search for the person. The person who
realizes the nature of his journey has already progressed along
<£5 mandated route. Thus, man concludes that the externals of
worship are generally an impediment to the quest. Externals are
i substitute for the true internal truth. Nordic theology' placed
fctle emphasis on the ceremonies or rituals of mass religion;
ms lead, they drew man toward himself. An individual who does
oot know himself can only lose his very tenuous grip on self if
be is immersed in mass pageants.
Eckhart distinguished between the good mystical
approach to God and the bad. Rosenberg saw this as ,
buttressing his own distinction between the true, typeforming
myth and the untrue myth. Under direction less able than
Eckhart’s, mysticism became radical heresy. Rosenberg argued
that under direction less able than his the myth-bound state
became a lie. The well-springs of Nazi teachings on the soul
and on Nordic religion, for Rosenberg, were to be found in
Meister Eckhart.
Eckhart pointed the way toward salvation. He rejected
what Rosenberg called the Roman-Jewish concept of love, for
the only love that impels the noble soul is that which unites us
with God. Love can never unite us with men; only honor can
do that. Love at its best draws us toward God and forms the
substance that unites our will with his. This love is purifying in
that the unity with God is necessarily purifying. God’s love is
94 Alfred Rosenberg

such that "God cannot help but to surrender himself to our

lonely hearts," said Meister Eckhart. This love involves no
surrender of seif, no self-humiliation, no self-abuse. The
purified soul seeks only to be a rest, at peace, with God and
with itself. It does not lead us toward others. Should man
attempt to use his love to unite with beings of his own or of
lesser orders (lesser men as well as beasts), it would detract
from that unique substance and that unique relationship that
brings us to the closest proximity with God.
Meister Eckhart had revived the idea despite the
oppressive scholasticism of his Dominican order. The soul of
Nordic man need never crawl toward God as did the Hebrew.
He could "fly" toward the Godhead, contemplate it as pure
being, and know the ideas as God knows them perfectly. He
could stand proud and erect before God as the uncreated co-
etemal being that he is. He could point to pride to his racial
groundings and the light of his soul. He could see God as only
a true child of light can see him, uncorrupted by the
imperfection and evil of darkness.
Proud Aryan man could communicate with God as one
whose being is to uphold the true supreme values as conceived
in the mind of God. He would not approach the Godhead as
one who has been corrupted by slavery or false humility and
meekness. He would stand erect as the co-equal in timelessness
of the Godhead. He would have approached God in a one-to-
one internalized relationship, not through meaningless externals.
He, the inheritor of untold thousands of generations of Nordic
Kultur, rejects worldly materialism as the externalization of
inner darkness and corruption. He would display the pride in
racial consciousness that accepts the true Godhead over those
idols that promise worldly kingdoms.
While the English-speaking world has largely ignored
Eckhart, his was among the most profound minds of that highly
 Meister Eckhart 95

productive era. He is properly considered the founder of the

German mystical school.
Like most of the medieval thinkers Eckhart needed to
define God before moving to other areas of philosophical and
theological inquiry and speculation. Like the pseudo-Dionysus
he calls God "nothing" meaning that God’s existence is fuller
than any conceivable being’s existence. As Creator God cannot
be described in such terms as apply to his creation. God is
above being since he created it. In comparison with God the
world is nothing; and nothing that can be said of the world can
apply rightfully to the concept of the divinity. Man seeks a
union with God, but that jointure cannot possibly be on the
logical or philosophical or physical planes. Union comes only
mystically, for the gap between creature and its Creator is
necessarily so great -- nearly infinite -- that no conventional
bridge can span it.
The highest goal of man is the union with Logos, i.e.,
God the Father as Creator, which transpires through the Son.
The birth of God in man, that is , the coming of Jesus into the
mortal soul, can occur only if and when the soul itself is wholly
purified. This becomes a mystical union of wills, certainly not
of the intellects. Grace is the great catalyst. The union of wills
can be effected only by redeeming and healing grace which is
a gratuitous gift of God, perhaps through the Holy Spirit. Man
cannot earn this healing gift of grace; it derives from God
according to a divine plan which man cannot fathom. However,
one can prepare the way by, as it were, cleaning the vessel
(himself) of malicious and self-serving and hedonistic thoughts
and rejecting like deeds.
Meister Eckhart was a Dominican, indeed the head of
the entire membership in Germany from 1312 onward. Like
others of his order in this time frame he was compelled to note
the importance, even dominance, of Thomas Aquinas, the
leading Aristotelian of the Dominicans in the Scholastic
96 Alfred Rosenberg

movement. Eckhart rather consistently wrote on two levels. On

the one level he used the best Thomistic jargon and expressions.
On the other level he wrote much as an Augustinian in
apparent defiance of Thomas. For the record, and to comply
with his order, he paid lip service to Thomas and accepted basic
Thomistic conclusions. On the other hand he wrote his own
philosophy which clashed sharply with Thomas and more closely
followed Augustine. Even here, he gave precedence to his own
ideas.
Eckhart distinguished between the Godhead (Deltas) and
the Trinity (Deus). The Godhead in "the ground of God" and is
indescribable. To provide a more comprehensible format,
through a process of external ization, the Godhead manifests
itself as the Persons of the Trinity. Truly religious men can
approach both the Trinity and the Godhead. There is, within
the man who is capable of having a mystical experience, a
"ground" (Grund, also called Funklein or scintilla) which can
"fly" to the Godhead. By and through proper contemplation
man can achieve or uncover or discover this ground or "spark."
He then soars above the mundane affairs of men and unites
with the Godhead. The discursive and imaginative activities that
ordinarily characterize conscious life are left behind. Man unites
with the Godhead through a mental state which defies
description because it is not translatable in conventional terms
or interpretive in images.
Man knows the Godhead as it is, but he cannot convey
this knowledge to others save in the poorest way in myth. To
know the Godhead in this way man must himself experience the
mystical union with the Godhead. During this union man loses
all sense of time, for the Godhead exists beyond time. The
Godhead is timeless, experiencing all things simultaneously. By
uniting with the Godhead man can also enter a timeless state.
Man loses a sense of being subject and of the Godhead being
object. Man does not, however, lose, in an objective sense, his
 Meister Eckhart 97

**n being. That is, man does not disappear into the Godhead,
the Godhead does not subsume man. Only in a relative and
personal sense does he lose the sense of being himself.
The soul of man operates on five levels in Eckhart
extend of on the three levels of Thomas and of Aristotle. Man
exists as a body with such powers as sensation and digestion.
Second, he experiences the things of the "lower intellect"
("common sense" level), knowing desire and passion. Third, he
has the reflective and contemplative powers of the higher
intellect. These are Thomas’ modes or levels of human
existence. Fourth, man knows the pure ideas (Plato) as God
conceives of them. Fifth, through the spark of the soul, man
knows the Godhead as it is.
The notion of the spark of soul can be interpreted to
imply that man’s soul is uncreated and, at least that portion of
it,is eternal. The creation that God is involved with extends only
to the external, physical world and not to the highest level of
the soul. It is possible to read in Eckhart more the World-
Artificer or Greek Logos than the God of the Hebrews who
created the world ex nihilo. The expression that God created
the world in the same "eternal now" in which the Trinity
evolved from the Godhead can be construed to imply the
eternity of the stuff from which the world was shaped. Just as
the Persons of the Trinity emanated from the Godhead without
reference to now, before or after, so the world may have
emanated without reference to the extension in time. The world
itself however measures time as a sequence of events with
reference to before and after, so the world may have emanated
without reference to extension in time. The world itself however
measures time as a sequence of events with reference to before
and after.
A clearly original thought on the nature of God
underlies the non-, even anti-, thomistic ideas Eckhart
advanced. While paying lip service to Thomas’ definition of
98 Alfred Rosenberg

God as that whose essence is to exist, Eckhart defined God’s

essence (in the Godhead) as intelligere. At the vital core, the
Godhead can understand and be understood, at least mystically.
Thomas Aquinas had defined God as the Trinity of Persons as
the only being whose essence is to exist. He wrote that God is
unlimited. God is not a finite being of our experience. God is
esse, pure, perfect and unadulterated being.
Many of Eckhart’s writings show that he accepted the
doctrine of creation ex nihilo even though other writings
implicitly deny this. This was an idea that Rosenberg denied
absolutely. Eckhart’s idea of creation clearly leaned toward the
continuous and continual creativity of God. Creation was not a
one-time act. He wrote on occasion of God and the Godhead
as one. Other times he wrote that these were two wholly
separate notions, something Thomas would not have accepted.
Eckhart also defied Thomas by suggesting that, on the levels of
being acceptable to Thomas, man knows only partial truths,
never pure truth. Until we mystically unite with the Godhead
through the spark of the soul we can have only truth mixed with
a great amount of untruth.
Eckhart was clearly a mystic. He is not a Thomistic
rationalist, although he did use the Thomistic method of
philosophical inquiry typical of the Dominican order. His
additions to Thomistic philosophy are comprehensible only if
one accepts mysticism as a necessary part of man’s existence as
man. By nature and definition, mystical experiences cannot be
discussed on a philosophical plane. Without his mysticism
Eckhart’s system and ideas would fall flat. With its addition his
theology-philosophy soars.
One reason we would classify Eckhart as a mystic is his
doctrine of the internalization of religion. Man must "get right"
with God insofar as is humanly possible. Man must seek, by an
internal arrangement of the will, to unite his being with God’s
will. Externalization of religion is essentially meaningless. Man
 Meister Eckhart 99

cannot unite with God through external acts. That would ssem
to suggest a physical or essential unity of man and God, ideas
*hich Eckhart had already rejected. The internalized experience
may have its outward manifestations, but external works, acts
and deeds are useless if the will of man is not attuned to the
Divine Will. Thus, Eckhart paid only lip service to festivals,
parades, public meetings and demonstrations and other external
actions. He did not attack them; he merely ignored them and
suggested, de facto, that they were far more a source of
distraction than of salvation.
A second reason for Eckhart’s mysticism is found in
relation to his doctrine of knowledge. In his epistemology he
sought to establish an essential unity between subject and
object. Only by intuition can a subject truly come to know an
object of its desire. Intuition is that vital faculty wherewith all
finite things can unite with and sink into the substance of the
deity. This unique intuition of creature and God binds the two
in an inseparable union that cannot be transcended in any way.
This mystical unity of creature with God is akin to thomistic
metaphysical knowledge.
In Eckhart there is a highly personal relationship of wills
which moves man toward religious knowledge and brings on a
religious experience that is much like a deep aesthetic
experience. This experience defies description. No creed or
canon of theology can adequately establish a union of wills
between God and that which is His creation. Man wills to make
himself like unto God. The true substance of religion is thus
felt, not written in codes of canon law.
Because the unique relation each man establishes with
God is wholly his own it cannot be subjected to parameters
established by religious authorities such as pope or a council of
a church or the college of cardinals. Creed is unimportant.
Creeds exist, as they would later for William of Ockham, as
matters of this world only. We find no differences among creeds
100 Alfred Rosenberg

in God’s realm. Man would be foolish to kill others over a point

of theology, such as in the difference between transubstantiation
and consubstantiation. Such as a matter would have no eternal
corresponding image.
A noble band of mystics appeared in Germany in the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries who were profoundly
influenced by Eckhart’s theology. A work known as The German
Theology appeared anonymously and was published by Martin
Luther in 1516 at which time Luther ascribed authorship to
John Tauler. Tauler was a fellow Dominican who signed the
manuscript best known to us today under the pen name "A
Friend of God." That MS was found in 1950 and has been used
ever since, being considered the definitive text. This manuscript
antedates by some years Luther’s published version of 1516.
The author did not offer itas an original work but merely as an
exposition of the theological ideas of Meister Eckhart. Tauler
also published some thirty short sermons that appeared in print
by 1498. While these sermons contain some new points, by and
large they are orthodox Eckhart.
John Tauler was born in Strassburg and died in that city
in 1361. It is probable that he was a student of Eckhart’s,
perhaps during his last years when he was relegated to the
position of private tutor while his works were being examined
by the papal commission. Tauler is known to have been
especially dedicated to his parishioners during the Black Death
which visited Strassburg circa 1335. At the same time the city
was placed under interdiction for reasons of alleged heresy. By
1341 Tauler had retired from active preaching and ministry and
began writing in earnest. His most important work which
rejected Eckhart’s pantheism while meditating on its mysticism
was The Imitation of Poverty of Christ. That work was long
ascribed to certain French authors, but its authorship has now
been conclusively shown to belong to Tauler.
Another mystic was the wealthy merchant Rulman
 Meister Eckhart 101

Merswin of Strassburg. Late in life he sold his possessions and

■e tired to a monastery that he bought with the proceeds of his
<ile. He was granted visions and these reinforced his mysticism
_nd his dedication to Eckhart’s theology. Merswin’s principal
work was The Book of the Nine Rocks, an invective against the
material corruption of men of all classes. He saw religion as
wholly internalized and thought of laws as the works of fools
who lacked inner conscience and a natural morality.
Adding to the existing ideas of piety and simple worship
was The Master’s Book (1346) assigned now to Nicholas of
Basel. It tells of a great master of Holy Scripture who preached
in an unnamed city and whose fame spread quickly over his
native land. A certain layman, again unnamed, is directed to go
to the great preacher and instruct him in the true faith.
Through divine intercession the layman is able to direct the
preacher and to show him that he has not yet attained the true
consecration that he must have because he has been shackled
by an international, corrupted doctrine. Realizing that he has
not yet purified his mind and that he has been too much
concerned with externals, the preacher withdraws to meditate
which he does over a two year period. After that time he is able
to fathom the mysteries of a union man’s will with that of God.
He learned piety and humility. He finds that the true path to
salvation lies in the mediation and in penitential exercises.
In general, the German mystics set the stage for the
creation of a German national religion. They presage the
purified church cleansed of its Hither-Asiatic, Etruscan and
Roman trappings. They defied Roman Catholic orders to
approach religion as externalized, institutionalized religion.
They disliked the emphasis they saw in the traditional Western
church on the content of dogma and ritualized theology.
Despite their intellectual attachments to the scholastics, they
openly defied them on points of theology. The mystics were not
interested in the proverbial hair-splitting of theology and
102 Alfred Rosenberg

philosophy they saw in scholasticism. They disliked Roman

Catholic rigidity in doctrine. They saw a natural conscience that
could and did guide purified man who truly sought unity with
God.
They taught a personal honor code instead of an
established and codified law. They thought the law useless for
those without personal integrity and honor. Those devoid of
morality and honor would violate the law anyway. The heroic
man would not need the law and would, more than occasionally,
feel confined by it. Development of the written law gave rise to
a hierarchy and a bureaucracy, neither of which served any
purpose to the moral man.
Eckhart returned to that call. He had far greater support
for the Germanic customs had continued through the Dark
Ages and into the Medieval times in the Germanies where he
preached and taught. It was as though Eckhart had struck a
chord deep down inside that cried out that is was true and right
for a man to internalize religion.

Bibliography

Alfred Rosenberg. Die Religion des Meister Eckehart. Munich, 1934.

Raymond B. Blakncy. Meister Eckhart. New York, 1941.
von Bracken, Ernst. Meister Eckhart: Legende und Wirklichkeit; Beitrdge zu
einem neuen Eckhartbild. Meisenheim am Gian, 1972.
Degenhardt, Ingeborg. Studien zum Wandel des Echhartbildes. Leiden, 1967.
Jones, Rufus. Studies in Mystical Religion. New York, 1909.
Landauer, Gustav. Meister Eckharts mystische Schrifien. Berlin, 1903.
Oilmans, Kalhc. Meister Eckhart. Frankfurt; 2d ed., 1957.
Quint, Josef. Meister Eckhart Deutsche Predigten und Traktate. Munich, 1955.
Schuermann, Reiner. Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Philosopher. London, 1978.
Schulzc-Maizaier, F. Meister Eckhart. Leipzig, 1938.
 The Roman Catholic Church

Several of the important leaders of National Socialist

Germany were nominally Roman Catholic, including Adolf
Hitler and Dr. Paul Joseph Gobbels. It is not clear what
relationship these men had with the Roman Catholic Church
trier they became leaders of the Third Reich. Rosenberg was
Protestant and undoubtedly shared some of the traditional
prejudices of Prussian Lutherans against the Catholic religion.
Rosenberg was critical of it more on the grounds that it had
wn-German bases than on the traditional religious grounds. He
was more conscious of his critiques against the Catholic Church
than he was of his attacks of Judaism. There is no similar
response to the Jewish attacks on his fundamental work. He just
did not care what Jews had to say about his book and his ideas.
In 1935 Rosenberg wrote An die Dunkebnanner unserer
Zeit: Eine Antwort auf die Angriffe gegen den Mythus des 20.
Jahrhunderts [To the Dark Men of Our Tinies: A Reply to the
Attacks Against the Myth of the Twentieth Century] as an answer
to Catholic reviews of his Myth of the Twentieth Century in the
Studien zum Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts [Studies of the Myth of
the Twentieth Century] published by the Diocese of Munster. In
1923 the Congress of Constance condemned National Socialism
as "the greatest heresy" of the Twentienth Century. The pope
placed The Myth of the Twentieth Century on the Roman Index
of Forbidden books, which Catholics could not read under the
penalty of mortal sin. Rosenberg cared little about that
particular act of censorship because he had not written The
Myth for Catholics. The Catholic Center and Christian
Democratic parties in most of Europe, following the Congress
of Constance, attacked National Socialism. They feared that
National Socialism would absolutely separate church from state
and remove the Catholic Church from the legal political parties
in Germany.
104 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg liked the Gospels, especially that of Saint

John and many elements of his writings show that influence.
Conversely, he attacked Saint Paul [Saul], referring to him as
the corrupter of Christian doctrine. It was Saint Paul who had
made the new religion into a form of Judaism. It was Saint Paul
who emphasized its compatibility with Hebrew traditions and
with the Jewish writings. Before John, the new religion had
Nordic, not Jewish, bases.
Who was the real historical Jesus? There are a number
of possible answers to that question and Rosenberg carefully
considered the opinions of various authorities on this point. His
philosophical-ideological mentor, Stewart Houston
Chamberlain, had concluded that the real Christ was an Aryan,
and was surely not Jewish. Some of the highly nationalistic
authorities of the German religious community in the
Nineteenth Century had come to like conclusions.
A second approach was to assume that Jesus Christ was
Jewish, but that the Jews of his time were not the European
Jews of the present day. Rosenberg and others traced
contemporary Jews to Asian, not Middle Eastern, roots. They
concluded the Old Testament Jews were of another, perhaps
non-semitic race. Jews of Biblical times were acceptable. Most
were converted to Christianity and absorbed into other non-
semitic populations.
Yet another possibility was that Jesus had been born of
Jewish parents, but was only God, not human, and, thus, the
racial connection made no difference. Having seen more closely
what the Jews were like Christ repudiated them, taking his
message to the Gentiles and away from the Jews. In the past
the Jews were the Chosen People, but they are no longer,
having lost that status to the Gentiles.
Rosenberg did not believe that Christ came as the
Jewish messiah. He did not believe that he came as the
redeemer of the Hebrew people. Jesus did not assert that he
 The Roman Catholic Church 105

came as one who would restore grandeur to the Jews or

resurrect some Golden Age of the Temple of Solomon. And
Rosenberg certainly did not believe that Jesus came to bring
some special message to a chosen people. [Tradition und
Cegenwart, p.261].
Some of the writers on whose works Rosenberg drew
bad come to a conclusion that Christ had come to fulfill
promises given to the ancient Hebrews, but, on arrival, had
concluded that the Jews were unworthy of such special
treatment and consideration. [John 1:11, "He came unto his own
and his own received him not."]. After his mission began, Jesus
concluded that he ought to pick out another people and chose
the Nordic peoples who were living in the Roman Empire. That
position was not strong enough for Rosenberg.
To Rosenberg there was no question that Jesus was an
Aryan, a descendant from a tribe of Nordic peoples expelled at
the time of the Exodus and the entry into the Promised Land.
These people had been isolated in Galilee by the Jews.
Rosenberg joined a long list of dissenters whose mythical
or mystical interpretation of the Bible went beyond empirical
evidence. Mystics do not arrive at a conclusion through wholly
rational or historical means. They arrive at their conclusions
and insights only through irrational and romantic means.
What Saint Paul could not do in subverting Christianity
from the outside he accomplished by boring away from within.
Saul Paul’s interest was not in spreading the true word of
Christ. His interest lay in taking over the new movement,
making adjustments in Christian doctrine to suit the purposes
of Judaism.
Saint Paul purged Christianity of most of its anti-semitic
doctrines. Rosenberg was certain anti-semitism was part and
parcel of Christ’s true message. Paul was unable to expunge all
anti-semitic references. He mitigated the impact of most anti­
semitic parts of the New Testament. But Paul could not remove
106 Alfred Rosenberg

all anti-semitic references because the people were aware of

what Jesus taught. Since the Gospels had been written after
Paul’s epistles Paul was no longer available to censor these
writings. Paul experienced little opposition to what he was able
to mitigate and expunge because the other apostles were not
equal to the challenge.
Some of the disciples may have been Jewish, Rosenberg
argued, and they were easily intimidated into returning to a
more orthodox religion. Others may have resisted but lacked
the intellectual capacity to challenge Paul’s trained legal mind.
Still others, having never known Jesus directly, were misled by
tricks and arguments. Some of Christ’s following never knew
exactly what Christ was saying and lacked perspective on his
attempted reforms. So Paul was able to win the day. Since Paul
maintained (presumably) clandestine ties with the Jews, he was
probably able to direct their political power against the minority
positions, thus martyring those whose opposition might have
been substantial, even telling.
We know that throughout its history, the Catholic
Church was deeply involved in suppressing heterodox views.
Many of these counter-movements taught ideas which seemed
reasonable, and some taught ideas and held doctrines that are
unclear to us today. Since these were vanquished, we have only
the reports of the victors, by and large, as to what ideas these
heretics preached. In some few cases, the doctrines of the
heresies survived sub rosa and constantly turn up in writings of
the scholastics and mystics. Many of the true ideas of the
"Nordic Christ" survived underground and are thus known to us
today. Many were known to the reformers like Luther, and
many before Luther. These ideas had been suppressed by the
Jews who had sought to alter Christianity for their own reasons.
of the Twentieth Century, pp.390-91].
Heresies had challenged the Roman Catholic Church,
which, in Rosenberg’s writings, had been captured by the Jews.
 The Roman Catholic Church 107

.Many of what Rosenberg called the problems of the Catholic

Church were based in the Jewish problem which we have
discussed separately. Provided one can separate the correct
ideas from the heretical ones, one can use the suppressedideas
as a basis for a reconstructed Nordic Christianity.
How do we know which ideas are true and which ideas
are false? Even those people who have Nordic blood could
arrive at false conclusions regarding God. Mythical or
metaphysical truths, whose substance forms and the subject and
title of Rosenberg’s book, guide Nordic man. Rosenberg would
expect the Nordics to receive the Holy Spirit whose guiding
hand would cause him to be able to separate the theological
wheat from the chaff.
All great movements among the Nordics have been
created and led by type-forming individuals. Such a person need
not be complete in and of himself. Luther and Eckhart were
such type-formers, but only up to a certain point. In Nordic
Christianity there would be much of the traditional, but
corrupted, Bible and much of Eckhart and Luther remaining.
The ideas that emerged would be new. They would consist in
the theology of God as handed down by his Germanic purifying
servants. One might not be able to recognize the individual
ideas of any one scribe, but the synthesis would approach the
true message of the Nordic Christ.
The purified scripture would clearly be Protestant, for
the Roman Catholic Church remains the great symbol of
corruption. Rosenberg saw Protestantism as a movement
seeking to clarify the Germanic conception of freedom. It
moved away from the slavery of Rome. Roman Christianity to
Rosenberg is the moral code of weaklings and slaves. Germans
were free by the nature of their souls whereas Romans and
those of the East accepted slavery as a natural condition of
man. The racially corrupted remains of Hither Asia and the
Etruscans who remained in Rome as Christianity triumphed
108 Alfred Rosenberg

were perfectly willing to believe Paul’s teachings that slaver}'

was a correct and godly sanctioned condition of man. They were
willing to live for the moment when they would be liberated to
live forever with the God of all nations. They were willing to
endure all manner of hardship in this world because they knew
that a perfect world followed. They rejected all personal
attributes of man while awaiting the Millennium.
These things were not suitable for Nordic man. The
proud German could not reject honor or live with a God who
created all men equal or who demanded that men live in
shackles. He did not wish to worship or live in Paradise forever
with a god who made men into slaves and who condoned
slavery. Such a god was Hebrew or Etruscan or Hither Asiatic,
but he was not German. Nordic man could not believe in a God
who, on the one hand, created races of differing levels of
achievement and quality of soul, and, on the other hand,
demanded that all men sit down as equals at the table of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Roman form of Christianity
accepted and taught the Canaan monstrosity throughout the
areas dominated by Roman Catholic teachings.
The Protestant movement had begun as a revolt of one
national people, the Germans, against the miscegenated rule of
the Roman pontiff. So, in Rosenberg’s view, the purified church
would be national protestant and it would teach and uphold
Nordic racial values in the face, and despite, of the Roman
teachings. Nordic Christianity had to extol the Nordic values of
be defeated. It would have died of non-support if it sought to
return to the racially mixed teachings of the Roman Church.
The national spirit of the German people would be crushed
Under the weight of continued lies and mis-statements unless
the teachings and doctrines of their church were turned around..
Against this background Rosenberg sought a type-
forming religious figure who would reconstruct Christianity and
bring the germinal ideas of Eckhart and Luther to a fruitful
 The Roman Catholic Church 109

'nclusion. The Myth of the Twentieth Century is filled with this

case of longing for the type-former. Rosenberg thought of the
•pe-forming person as one who was yet to come. Much of the
National Socialist ideology went wanting for fulfillment because
f the war. The destruction of the Third Reich meant that the
Jea fell stillborn from the pen.
The myth which National Socialism filled grew out of the
ermented blood of fallen heroes of the First World War. The
~iyth of Nordic Christianity would also grow out of the
ermented blood of the fallen warriors. Great wars are
aevitably followed by periods of great national religious
.wakenings. The population of Germany after the Great War
vas ready for conversion. A great, type-forming leader would
’.ave little difficulty in attracting a mass following. The type-
’ormer was not found and Nordic religion had to wait.
Much of the exact detail of the Nordic Christianity would
nave been worked out, inspired and directed by the type-former
•riiose ideas would direct the course of the new religion. The
new religion would be grounded in the German national
character. Its supreme value would be honor. It would be
compatible with the concept of individual and national honor
and pride. The true Nordic man is a proud man. He has pride
in his accomplishments, his home and his family, but, above all,
he has pride in his race and his national heritage. This sustains
in him the supreme value of honor which he can never betray.
Such pride and honor are unparalleled in the annals of Judaeo-
Christian religion, for, as Rosenberg concludes, the Hither-
Asiatic peoples generally, and the Jews particularly, are without
pride in the Nordic sense. They are nations without racial or
personal honor. The Christian religion as comprised to date had
no interest in Nordic values generally, and the honor-pride
supreme value specifically, [see Myth of the Twentieth Century,
p.604].
no Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg realized that traditional Christianity had de­

emphasized the values of pride and self-assertiveness, but his
nationalistic sentiments dictated that a true Nordic Christian
Church be representative of the Germanic values. There is no
humbleness or withdrawal from the real world in the new
religion. Drawing in large on Saint John in particular, and on
the Gospels generally, Rosenberg concluded that Christ had the
"fire" of a true Aryan in incidents such as the one involving the
money-changers in the Temple. This man who lashed the evil
ones who were obsessed only with the idea of coins and profits
was not a passive figure. Such strong, direct, positive action
required a Nordic spirit. There was nothing of a moral code of
weaklings and slaves there. Christ’s actions were representative
of a true Nordic enforcement of an honor code over and against
those who were without honor. The trans-evaluation of values
in Nordic Christianity represents nothing less than a return to
true Christian doctrine, presuming that we mean by Christian
those teachings truly flowing from Jesus.
In the world of religion there are positive and negative
theologies. The Etruscan-Roman-Jewish theology of the Roman
Church is a negative one. Rosenberg envisioned the Nordic
Church as the representative of the positive type of theology.
The Roman Church is ennobled only through and by the actions
of German participants. Rosenberg asserts that the Roman
Church is incapable of the duty-honor supreme value except by
and through the participation of German peoples and the
philosophical writings of Nordic clerics, [see, Myth of the
Twentieth Century, pp,13ff].
Negative theology has its positive form, if only in a small
way. One cannot reform that which is corrupt, that is, negative,
but must replace it or at least make major alterations. This was
the mistake of Luther. He tried to reform the Roman Church.
His Evangelical Protestant Church was of higher stature
because it was a German national church. Lutheranism was still
 The Roman Catholic Church ill

tmderlain by corrupted Asiatic doctrines. Still, Luther’s

contributions were significant, for the flame of German
supreme values might have been snuffed out completely had he
□ot precipitated the Reformation. One must then proceed along
these clearly defined battle lines to change all of the alien
negative elements, replacing them with wholly positive
constituent parts, (see, Protestantische Rompilger: Der Verrat an
Luther und dem Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts].
The Roman Catholic Church built on the foundations of
love, but Rosenberg concluded that the love was false. Instead
of emphasizing the positive elements of love, such as honor and
duty and devotion to family, state and ideals, the Roman
Church looked at love as a tool of submission to God. In
practice, Rosenberg argued, this meant complete submission to
rhe vicar of Christ on earth, the Roman pontiff. The Roman
Catholic Church sought to rule through love in a material,
political sense. Dominion over men’s soul came to mean
dominion over men’s actions and society. Love meant that a
man could not choose his own destiny in an individual way. The
will of man and the will of his race were subjugated to the
power of the church. The Roman Catholic Church made love
into a one way street wherein one offered unlimited devotion
to the Roman Church and God, but received no guarantee of
reciprocity. One was to accept whatever unfortunate events or
catastrophes occurred, giving up his consequent sufferings to
God. The Roman Church served to mediate with God and to
expiate the sins which had precipitated the crises. The Church
taught that love meant blind obedience to its authority and
blind acceptance of all that came, giving up to God as his will
being done.
Little of Roman Catholic theology would be useful in
reconstructing Christianity. Proud Aryan man could not be a
pawn in the hands of the Roman pontiff. He could not blindly
accept the evils of the world as the will of God. He could not
112 Alfred Rosenberg

merely accept whatever came without challenging the authority

of the Roman pontiff to determine the proper course of action.
He could not accept the authority of an alien ruler. He could
not work with a system that removes individual responsibility or
honor or duty. Man had to decide certain things for himself
without interference from a non-Aryan cleric. [Myth of the
Twentieth Century, pp.70ff].
Rosenberg’s man believed strongly in the deity. But that
deity bore little resemblance to the one offered by the Church
of Rome. The ideas that had been suppressed by the Church
survived precisely because God had willed that they survive.
Periodically, God had raised up a prophet like Justin Martyr or
Meister Eckhart who risked all by speaking the truth. Without
such intercession the true ideas of Jesus would have
disappeared without a trace. But God had willed that a single
spark be kept burning against the day when a type-forming
individual would arise who would pull together the ideas that
God wished to convey to the German nation. This would
happen in God’s own time. Meanwhile, mortals would continue
the quest for truth by upholding the racial values of duty and
honor. This racial preparation would enable the true chosen
people, the Nordic race, to come to an immediate acceptance
of the true message of the type-former. His supreme values,
those already ordained by God for the German people, have
been inculcated since eternity as attributes of the Aryan soul.
Nothing can prevail against these values excepting the ultimate
prostitution of racial essence, racial bastardization.
Roman theology, like Rome of the Empire, and, indeed,
all of Asiatic and similar cultures, had been built on the
premise of the love for all peoples and the equality of all
nations. Such an idea was repugnant to the Nordic ideals.
German man could never accept the obvious limitation of race
mixing and racial brotherhood.
 The Roman Catholic Church 113

Apostles of miscegenation suggested that the racial

values of different people should be altered. All cultures should
be homogenized. Values would be universal, meaning that the
caique supreme values of Nordic nations would be challenged
tnd disappear. This would leave only a corrupted love with
which Nordic man would be at odds. His values would be
inundated in the sea of race mixing.
The race-mixing required by Roman Catholic Church
would deprive this religion of any type-building strength. Type­
formers are the product of various strong races. By definition
they are linked to the purity of races and cannot occur in mixed
racial types. The type-forming strength of Greeks disappeared
when the Greek society opened its doors to the various Hither
Asiatic races and allowed the type-forming Nordic strength to
be overwhelmed by alien elements. The same is true for Rome.
It admitted the Etruscan and Hither Asiatic elements late in the
Republic. They precipitated the decline of the Empire. [Myth of
the Twentieth Century, pp.8 Iff].
The love the Roman Catholic Church offered as its
Supreme value was false, as Rosenberg saw it. Its falsity is
proved by the fact that its love did not permeate the upper
strata of the religion. Its leaders were driven, Rosenberg
declared, by the motives of greed and profit, not by true
Christian love. The leaders were interested in playing power
politics using all of the highly innovative tools they created,
such as excommunication, interdiction and crusades. The
Catholic Church ruled by hate, not by love. Its hate was
expressed in the force of its religious tribunals, such as the
infamous Inquisition. It sought entry to a country, but as soon
as it triumphed it lost its outward trappings of benevolence and
toleration. It used existing state powers to destroy its enemies
or, when the state was reluctant to abuse such power, it used
the powers which its philosophers and its canon lawyers
invented. Had the Roman Catholic Church had any true type­
114 Alfred Rosenberg

forming skills, had it not been the product of alien and bastard
cultures, it would have demanded that its leaders practice the
virtues it offered for mass consumption. Its leaders did not
themselves practice the love of Jesus. That proves that the
whole idea of love was, from beginning to end, a hoax.
[Dunkelmanner, pp.13-18].
Only in Oriental worlds do we find the great dichotomy
between a religion with a supreme value designed for mass
consumption only and one with a different highest value
designed only for the leadership. The Christian religion in its
Roman Catholic variety was a "canaan monstrosity" of Hither
Asiatic origin, not of Nordic origin. This explains why Roman
Catholicism lacks type-forming strength in the Germanic sense.
In a true religion the type-forming men would be the
most eloquent spokesmen for the supreme value of the race and
its national religion. Type-formers show by their heroic acts
what the values truly mean. They would practice values so that
other might imitate their lives. They do not seek to force other
men to follow; they could not bring themselves to lead by
coercion. The only force involved would be the force of
principle and the compulsion of example. If the type-formers
cannot command their followers by their own individual
courage then they are not a true type-formers. They fail only
when the people are not racially attuned to their leadership and
their highest values.
Rosenberg illustrated his point by telling the story of the
pagan German king Radbod. He received the missionaries of
Pippin, Duke of the Franks. He had heretofore persecuted all
Christian apostles sent to him. Upon questioning this especially
devout group and threatening them with all manner of tortures,
he found them resolute in their beliefs. They were willing to
accept martyrdom if that was required of them, but they would
not reject their faith. Seeing men of such great devotion, type­
formers who truly believed in their faith and who were willing
 The Roman Catholic Church 115

v> offer love to those who offered none in return, Radbod

-•eturned them to Pippin, but only after doing them great honor.
He disliked their religion and would not reject the gods of his
fathers, but he admired men of courage and dedication.
Reversing the story, Rosenberg says that had Radbod
sent equally courageous men to the court of the pontiff, he
would have either converted them or killed them. The Roman
Church admired courage only among it own adherents. It
despised such courage in others. [Myth of the Twentieth Century,
pp. 603-04],
Following this story, Rosenberg discussed the conversion
of Germany to Roman Christianity and its consequences. The
Roman-Etruscan-Jewish system was eager to gain acceptance
and so it was flexible in allowing the various native peoples to
retain most of their old religious practices. Many of the old
gods reappeared as saints in the Church. Many of the native
festivals were retained and given only superficial alteration.
That toleration was undermined little by little. So gradual was
the process of incremental change that the generations hardly
noticed that changes had been made. Nordic racial values were
changed to alien, Asiatic ones, although a second process also
began.
Irrespective of its alien essence, the Christian Church
was ennobled by and through the devotion of millions over
many generations of Germans. Much of the Church’s negativity
was ameliorated by the primal and determining German
character.
Germany was able to contain the expansion of the
Roman Empire in a way not duplicated elsewhere. The Roman
generals, including Julius Caesar, expressed their admiration for
the heroism of the Germans. Eventually even the stone wall of
German power gave way, not to the military power of Rome,
but to its corrupted religion. It might have been better had
Germany been conquered by the racially pure Roman armies
116 Alfred Rosenberg

of the Republic. When the conquest did come it was at the

hands of their racially impure later Romans who based their
philosophy on Jewish ideals.
Rosenberg characterized the Romans and Greeks in
their early stages of development as Nordic types. This was
untrue of the later empires of these nations. Germany became
the third Aryan nation to be overrun by Hither-Asiatics and
Jews. Germans could as little escape this struggle as could the
other two great Nordic nations before them, the Greeks and the
Romans. Neither was able to stem the tide of migration. As the
civilizations of Nordic peoples withdrew from thp South and
East, they bore within their ranks the human flotsam of Asia.
Along with this mass of aliens came their alien ideas. They bore
the ideas of Hither Asia over the Alps and into the heart of
Germany. They could not comprehend the Nordic values so
they sought to destroy them.
Rosenberg characterized the Germans as a peaceful and
hospitable people who welcomed new ideas and different
religions. Their generous nature permitted the aliens to
infiltrate their nation. They never gave a thought to the
Weltanschauung of the new jetsam of Hither Asia and Rome. It
never occurred to Germans that these alien peoples would have
ideas and ideals that would run counter to the German culture.
They naively presupposed that all men thought in the same way
and shared the same values and all men gave great value and
honor and duty and courage. Their national character made
them vulnerable to the money-grabbing, self-serving,
dishonorable peoples of another race. This naivety continued
for some considerable period of time because the idea of
another people being vicious ran so strongly counter to all they
believed in. It took a leader of special courage, devotion and
historical insight to discover this fact. It took real courage to
convey this wisdom to the German nation.
 The Roman Catholic Church 117

The Roman Church despised German ideals and the

true supreme value. The Roman Church very carefully cloaked
its opposition under the rhetoric of love. The German people
lay quite vulnerable through the Dark Age and the Middle Ages
and even into the present times.
Luther never fully comprehended the nature of the
Roman Church. His Reformation remained woefully
incomplete. He resisted the Church of Rome, but. for
incomplete reasons. It is not that his break was accomplished
on wholly erroneous grounds, but, rather, that he never saw the
true reasons for opposing the Western Church. He thought of
profound theological reasons why the Roman Church was
wrong. but the classical arguments, such as the
transubstantiation versus consubstantiation debate over the
cucharist, had no real bearing on the basics of the need for
reformation. Luther never saw the Roman Church as a vehicle
for the Jewish ideas that ran counter to Nordic ideals. He never
saw that the Roman Church was yet another, albeit lower, mass,
form of the Hebrew doctrines that Jesus had opposed, [see
Protestantische Rompilger, pp.lOff].
Luther blindly accepted Saint Paul’s teachings. He
discovered his doctrine of justification by faith alone in the
writings of Saint Paul. Luther was strongly and irresolutely anti­
semitic, but he never understood that his prejudices against
Jews should be extended to Saint Paul. And Luther never
understood that the real reason Roman Christianity was corrupt
was that it had Jewish roots. Luther had felt Nordic racial
stirrings in the very depths of his being, but he had partially
misinterpreted their full meaning. The soul of his Nordic race
was crying out to him, Rosenberg argued, to remove Judaism
from Christianity. A mere doctrinal or theological dispute with
Rome was insufficient. Luther had to remove the Jewish base
of Roman Christianity. [Myth of the Twentueth Century, pp.614-
15].
118 Alfred Rosenberg

The Nordic clerics of the Scholastic period had thought

in Germanic terms, and Luther admired their ideals. Neither he
nor they had understood that their ideas were essentially
restatements of the Nordic national soul and spirit. These ideas
ran counter to the Roman Church’s ideas precisely because of
racial differences that were insurmountable. William of
Ockham, Duns Scouts, Nicholas of Cusa and John of Paris
along with Marsiglio of Padua had taught that the Roman
pontiff was incapable of honor and that his constant meddling
in temporal affairs had brought corruption in the Western
Church. They did not see that the very conception of a Church
hierarchy, something that they generally opposed to for wrong
and incomplete reasons, was antithetical to the Nordic idea of
freedom. The inordinate emphasis on canon law and doctrine
repelled them, but again they were uncertain as to the real
reasons why they opposed these things.
Ockham especially opposed the exclusiveness of the
Church and taught that men of good will who lead heroic and
exemplary lives would be saved irrespective of religious beliefs.
He believed that differences in theologies occurred in this world
only. God permitted the differences of creed to occur to
confuse the unworthy. Ockham knew that creed was
unimportant and that too much law exposed a people that was
incapable of virtue on its own. Therefore, he opposed
codification of volumes of law as an action that was unworthy
of true believers. Men had better concentrate on developing
honorable ideas of duty and service to the community.
Most heterodox medieval clerics opposed the doctrine of
papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals. Unable to
break from the idea of a supreme authority and the Jewish code
of laws for man’s behavior, they turned to ideas such as a
general church council to replace the pope. A few heterodox
theologians could see that church policy had to be nationally
based. They looked at the whole body of the faithful as
 The Roman Catholic Church 119

constituting the final authority in matters of faith and morality.

The entire membership of the church would collectively, but
never individually, decide matters of faith and morals. This was
the traditional German way to do such policy-making.
Others, mostly non-Germans, were unwilling or unable
to relinquish their clerical powers. They gave control over the
church council to the clerics and thus retained a hierarchy. All
wanted to retain some secular functions, notably responsibility
for teaching and training children. These things gave them
special powers, privileges and immunities and insured their
continued special position within the state. It is very difficult to
find clerics of the pre-Reformation period who were willing to
give up the idea of a hierarchical church.
This denial of an elaborate hierarchy remained, to
Rosenberg, one of the great contributions of Luther as a
counter-revolutionary. Luther had tried to restore Germanic
values to the Church. Luther disliked hierarchy and chose to
dismantle most, if not all, of the upper strata. Election of
church authorities by the people instead of by an elite marked
a return to Nordic folk values. So, also, did Luther’s doctrine of
'every man a priest" serve to dismantle the Jewish style
hierarchy which gave to certain people an exclusive right to
communicate with God for the people as a whole. The clergy
could be stripped of power only by removing that special power
of intercession with God on behalf of the people and this
Luther did with a single stroke. [Tradition und Gegenwart,
pp.130-31 and 613-14],
Action taken against the church hierarchy was nothing
less than the result of Luther’s type-forming personality
grounding itself in the traditions of the Nordic peoples. Nordics
had always resisted institutionalizing power in this way, so
Luther’s counter-revolution struck a note deep inside his race.
120 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg thought highly of the traditional theology of

the Nordic peoples and referred to it constantly in his treatment
of the Roman Catholic Church. He argued that the Teutonic
religion was quite profound and that many of its deepest
thoughts were stolen by the church as it moved northward.
Nordic primal strength was strong enough to resist Roman
invasion for some considerable period of time. The Roman
religion was taught as mythology in most schools.
[Protestantische Rompilger, pp. 49 and 72].
Rosenberg argued that many of the Nordic symbols and
customs had devolved from Teutonic religion to Christianity.
The crucifix, the most important symbol of Christendom had
originated some 3000 years before Christ was crucified as a
mythical and mystical Teutonic sign. The original Roman gibbet
on which Jesus was assassinated was replaced with the Aryan
cross because Nordic peoples more readily identified with it.-
The Nordics had presumed that the cross had great power for
several thousand years before the T-shaped instrument of
Christian power had emerged. The Church stole and used
effectively the heavenly power of the sun. It reappeared as the
halo attached to and rising over the heads of Christian saints.
The Nordic figures of Wotan on horseback appeared as symbols
of other saints in many lands, most commonly as Saint George
in England. The Church took the slaying of the dragon, an
important sequence as Siegfried slew Fafner, and copied that
act of heroism in the legend of Saint George. [Myth of the
Twentieth Century, pp. 162-63].
Various natural signs that Teutonic religion used
ritualistically appeared again in Christianity. Notable was the
power of lightning. Wotan as the eternal wanderer was an
archetype for the many wandering saints we encounter in much
Christian literature.
The Church resurrected many pagan customs of
Germany of the pre-Christian era. Pagan rites of spring
 The Roman Catholic Church 121

remained. Rosenberg saw the celebration of the winter solstice

fl Teutonic legend as the natural choice for the birthday of
Jesus. Celebrations of resurrection connected with Ostara were
transformed into the resurrection of Christ from the tomb on
'.he third day. In short, the Roman Catholic Church had been
raptured by the Nordic theology. It assumed forms known to
have existed in Northern Europe for centuries before Christ’s
birth. Mythological figures have become familiar to Germans as
veil as to others in the form of Christian saints.
Christian missionaries thought that they could spread the
new faith as easily in Nordic areas as they had in Rome, but
they were sadly mistaken. The inner power of native Teutonic
religion was infinitely more resilient than the missionaries had
imagined. The German national religion did not fall in a single
stroke as had the Roman pantheon of gods. Roman religion left
almost no visible impression on Roman Christianity, but this
was not true of the German faith.
The Roman Church was influenced by the Nordic race
and its national religion, although no credit was given to them.
Therein lay one of Rosenberg’s greatest quarrels with Roman
Catholicism: the Roman . Church took the Nordic religious
strength, made it its own and refused to share credit with it.
The Roman Church acted as if all these things were built by the
alien clerics out of nothing that preexisted. The Roman Church
adopted Nordic customs out of need, but then refused to give
credit for the virtues that need had spawned, allowing the
richness of Teutonic virtues of life to fall to the Roman Church
as though it had never interfaced with the Teutonic theology or
seen Teutonic symbols. This Rosenberg described as
'grotesque." [Myth of the Twentieth Century, p.219f].
Eventually, the Roman pontiff in the person of Boniface
Vin saw that either Rome or Germany must be predominate.
Boniface therefore sought the help of other non- and anti­
Nordics and they attempted to rip apart the fabric of Roman
122 Alfred Rosenberg

Catholic belief by removing what is Teutonic from it. But

Boniface and his allies like Louis the Pious of France were too
late. There was too much that was Nordic and too little of
substance that was Roman. That which was Nordic was stronger
in texture and fabric and could not be tom out without a total
disruption of the theology. There were frightful purges of the
Germans within the Church and many were slaughtered to
"restore" Roman domination of the religion. [Myth of the
Twentieth Century, p.185].
According to Rosenberg there were millions of German
heretics and many thousands were exterminated in a horrible
bloodbath. The pontifical action did not end with this one
stroke. Rosenberg wrote that the church continued its
persecution of those who were German nationals and those who
retained a belief in German supreme values. Persecution
continued even through his time. The church could not
countenance that Germans knew something of the German
origins of the best of Catholicism. The Church would prefer not
to have that fact broadcasted. [Myth of the Twentieth Century,
pp.70-71 and 159].
The Roman Catholic Church of Rosenberg’s Myth of the
Twentieth Century was willing to seek allies at any level to
achieve its aim of universal acceptance. There were many
secular rulers who shared the drive for secular power exhibited
by so many popes. The Church invited them to become
"accomplices" in Rosenberg’s words provided they shared a
universal outlook. The Church rejected any national movement;
it sought universality exclusively in its scheming. The Roman
Church counselled the great figures of the Middle Ages to come
within the fold and to join in its intrigues that stemmed from its
romantic power plays. It offered these leaders the opportunity
to exploit its virtues of love, humility, resignation and
submission as fodder for the human cattle who followed Church
 The Roman Catholic Church 123

ind Church-approved state, [see Myth of the Twentieth Century,

?391 and 118).
The Roman Church rejected nationalism because
cational ism reflected the Germanic values of honor, dignity,
pride and self-assertiveness. Nationalism was incompatible with
Roman Catholicism because the latter was bom out of Judaism
hich was itself universalist in outlook. It despised nationalism
for that movement alone could successfully challenge the
Roman Church’s universalist power.
Rosenberg was especially critical of "feminist epigrams"
of Roman Christianity. He singled out for scorn concepts such
as "children of God." He saw no reason why the Catholic
Church would delight in Saint Francis’ preaching to animals and
birds. Most of all, he loathed the ideas of forgiving one’s
enemies [Matt. 6:12] and of turning the other cheek when an
enemy smites one [Luke 6:29], Likewise, Rosenberg rejected the
analogy of Christ as the Lamb of God. [Revelations 5:6]. He
preferred symbols of pride and nobility. [Myth of the Twentieth
Century, p.607]. The Sermon on the Mount offered a feminine
submissive attitude. It presented "Christ the Submissive." [Myth
of the Twentieth Century, p.604].
Rosenberg disliked Christian emphasis on the cross.
There was nothing heroic about the Crucified Christ. In a
Nordic Church heroic acts would replace the emphasis on
Christ’s passion. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, pp. 616-17].
Rosenberg preferred Christ as a powerful preacher and great
teacher. He saw something of Nordic heroism in the attack on
the money changers in the Temple. [Myth of the Twentieth
Century, p.604]. It was for his resistance to the Jews, and not for
his passivism, that Christ had to die. [Myth of the Twentieth
Century, p.604].
The Nordic conception of love differs significantly from
the love taught by the Roman Catholic Church. Christian love
teaches one to feel empathy with and sympathy for those
124 Alfred Rosenberg

inferior to himself. Nordics could not summon up the

sentiments of pity for one in trouble, Rosenberg says. They
could only answer calls based on honor or duty. Germanic
nobility dictates that one not extend a condescending love to his
racial inferior. Christian love according to Rosenberg consists
in a submissive humility that is alien to Germans. Nordic
character must be uplifted through various human acts. Acts are
strengthened by a will act and reawakened in the consciousness
of honor and duty. Sympathy is a feeling that is alien to
Germans who are conditioned by the supreme value of honor.
Sentimentality, Rosenberg wrote, accounts for the "greatest
devastation of our total life." A feeling of sympathy invokes an
act of the will toward the crippled, the criminal, the inferior and
the sick of society. In short, sentimentality is directed toward
the human flotsam that a society must naturally reject if it is to
survive.
Christian teaching as voiced in Roman Catholicism has
a special, high place for the lesser beings that exist in the state.
This is a natural consequence of teachings about God’s
boundless love and mercy, and of democratic ideas of equality
of all races and peoples. Democratic racelessness leads the
Church toward a defense of equality of human rights for all
peoples irrespective of ethnic origin or status before the great
tribunal of mankind. Such democratic ideals, never permitted
on major questions within the church, are consequent to Roman
Catholic teachings about the meaninglessness of racial divisions.
Christian ideas of love, brotherhood and charity destroy
the basic rules of nature such as survival of the fittest. They
teach that the weak and the corrupt have a right to continued
existence on the.same level with Germans who have served the
honor code. Ideas of equality disrupt the laws of nature
intended to protect the soul of the species and to give life-form
to the people and the state. A racially conscious state would not
pity what is weak or corrupt within it; rather, it would reject,
 The Roman Catholic Church 125
npel and destroy these alien and corrupting elements that
X'eaten its continued high existence. [Myth of the Twentieth
Century, pp. 156 and 560].
Nordic racism would not tolerate acts of charity toward
±»se who could not shoulder their own loads and who depend
•a society for their continued existence through public and
private doles. The strong, racially conscious state rejects
criminal behavior and punishes it very severely. The unhealthy
•rate becomes a raceless scheme that lusts for unity with other
tindred societies and this unity results only in an unhealthy
•cbjugation to the Roman pontiff or some other like-corrupted
Kjthority. Raceless, charitable states invite the wrath of nature
fcr they have violated the mandates of heaven.[Blut und Ehre:
Wesengefuge, pp. 72 and 156].
As Rosenberg wrote, "The dogma of all-embracing love
md the equality of all human beings before God, on the one
hand, and of democratic ’human rights’ founded neither on race
aor on national honors of the other band, were the bases on
vhich the European brotherhood of nations had developed.
Consequently, [Europe] became the custodian of the inferior,
crippled, of the criminals and the rejects...." [Myth of the
Twentieth Century, p. 169].
The Roman Church invites participation in those values
that teach one to humble and subjugate himself to the authority
of the pontiff. It invites one to accept the will of the pontiff
instead of one’s own will. It suggests that an un-Catholic
thought is an unholy thought whose host will surely go to hell.
It teaches obedience to the discipline of the same papal
authority which itself is undisciplined and authoritarian. If offers
special means of expiation through the sale of indulgences of
many kinds. It alone has the magic key to open doors of
paradise not only for those still living but for those who have
already died. In the sacrament of penance (reconciliation,
presently), the Roman Catholic Church possesses one of the
126 Alfred Rosenberg

great prerogatives of all time. It can bind or loose things in

heaven, adding penalties to the unrepentant while aiding the
contrite sinner. Its power extends so far that God will cooperate
in the process of binding and loosening. Through confession the
Church learns how to control men, fathoms their innermost
thoughts and controls their actions by setting the penance that
must be fulfilled. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, pp. 185,361-63
and 603].
The Roman Church became corrupted and had to be
cleansed by a force exterior to itself. The Roman church was
externally corrupted because of its inner degradation. It had
accepted the teachings of the Old Testament and had
incorporated the Hebrew ideas as part of its own teachings. Its
teachings required that the body of the faithful view Israel as
the Holy Land. It held that God had chosen the Hebrews as his
own people. It favored Jewish occupation of the lands of the
Middle East. It'accepted the Jehovah of the Jews, that God of
vengeance and wrath, as the true god.
Rosenberg especially disliked the Jehovah which must be
approached to one’s knees and with face buried in the dirt. He
hated the idea of having to prostrate proud Aryan man before
the selfsame deity which had made him proud. Rosenberg
wrote, "The Old Testament as a book of religious instruction
must be abolished once and for all. With it will end the
unsuccessful attempt of the previous 1500 years to make us all
spiritual Jews." [Myth of the Twentieth Century, p.603].
Once the Catholic Church became involved with
expanding temporal power it had to undergo corruption in its
essentials according to Rosenberg. The sale of indulgences and
other religious intercessions brought it to precisely the same
point that the Jewish religion was at when Jesus was born and
when he chased the money-changers from the Temple. Jesus
was disgusted with the emphasis on material things in Judaism
just as Eckhart, Luther and others were disgusted with
 The Roman Catholic Church 127
Catholicism and its sales of talismans and indulgences. Such
corruption was the result of the Jewish influences on the
Catholic Church. Rosenberg argued that such corruption would
not have been possible in a truly national church which
reflected the Nordic supreme values. Rosenberg was critical of
Luther because he concluded that Luther had recognized the
perfidy of the Jews but still had placed great emphasis on both
Paul’s writings in the New Testament and the writings of the
Old Testament Hebrews. [Dunkeltnanner, pp. 13-18].
The Jehovah of the Hebrews with his arbitrary and
capricious acts could not have been the product of an Aryan
civilization. Nordic man could not conceive of creation ex
nihilo. Nordic man would reject the idea of God interrupting
the natural order with periodic miracles that violate the
essential laws of nature. Neither could Germans accept the
Syrian-Etruscan-African" assertion that God created the world
for his glorification. A Nordic God would have been self-
satisfied that He was perfection and would not have demanded
constant worship or incessant reassurance of his own glory and
perfection. The Roman Catholic Church taught that man’s soul
was vastly inferior to the essence of God.
Aryans posit man’s equal existence with God on the
moral-spiritual level on which the soul operates. More in
keeping with the Germanic idea of the soul is the ancient Aryan
teaching that man and God (Ahura-Mazda) share in the same
struggles against evil. Germanic theology rejects the inequality
of souls between man and God.
The Germanic conception of the soul suggests two things
that are conspicuously absent in the Catholic teaching. First, it
teaches that the soul must be spiritually free. The old racial
idea of God among the Germans absolutely posited the
spiritual freedom of man. Second, it taught the inner direction
of spirituality. Man did not seek God over him or away from
him or in externals. Rather, man looked for God within.
128 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg cited the teaching of Jesus that the kingdom of God

is within each of us. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, p.76]. This
teaching is reflected in Augustine who taught that the footsteps
of the Trinity are found within each of our souls.
The great metaphysical difference between Catholicism
and Nordic tradition is exemplified in the struggle between two
concepts of being represented by the German words Sosein and
Dasein. This struggle begins when one asks, where did the world
come from? To the German, the world always was. There was
never a period of only God and nothingness. The Nordic idea
of the world is that there was pre-existing being, divided
between ordered being (cosmos) and unordered being (chaos).
The on-going struggle of history is to order chaos so that all
becomes cosmos. The term Dasein suggests eternal being, being
that is/was/will be always present, [see Myth of the Twentieth
Century, pp.134-35 and 140-41].
The Catholic teaching, following Judaism, teaches that
there once was a period of nothingness and God; God then
created being from nothingness (creation ex nihilo). The idea of
creation ex nihilo appears as a form of "blasphemous
materialism" to the whole Aryan tradition. The Roman Church
assumes only that the Jewish Jehovah proved that he was "I am
Who I Am" by claiming creative powers beyond those attributed'
to any other god.
If God created the world from nothingness, and if in the
beginning there was only God and non-being (nothingness),
then all beings that now exist, have existed or can exist over
their existences to God. This is the basis of Judaeo-Catholic
teaching. It makes man wholly dependent on the godhead, but
that he is so far inferior to God that he can never communicate
with God in any meaningful way. It assumes that there is a ।
nearly infinite gap between creator and creation. There is an
insurmountable problem for man in that he is trapped. He is
permanently stationed beneath God and can only look up to
 The Roman Catholic Church 129
Itn and forever thank God for having rescued him for non-
feeing.
The Nordic conception of God and man concluded that
tan and God are co-extensive and co-terminus in time. Both
existed for the exact same period. One is not dependent on the
•ther for his existence. Neither can credit the other with
creation. One cannot alter the others existence. Rosenberg
Rioted Schiller, "If I think of God I relinquish the idea of a
creation." Nordic conceptions of the world, from the ancient
Aryans of India to the last pre-Christian, always spoke of the
permanency of the world and of God.
The Nordic cosmology allow man to approach God on
la entirely different plane from the Hither Asiatics. Each has
respect for the other, for each exists without the other, God is
ziore "that greater than which nothing can be conceived"
(Anselm) than he is "creator of the world ex nihilo" (St. Thomas
Aquinas following Aristotle),
A created being is unfree. It must constantly recall that
it does not exist on its own. It cannot be dependent on its own
devices. It is ever reminded that it is inferior to, and the
capricious creation of, the one who created it. It is never certain
whether it does things because of its own powers or because its
creator has programmed it to act in a certain way. As Leibnitz
suggested, a stone falling through space, should it for a moment
be able to think, might conclude that it was doing so of its own
free will.
Thinking man can rationally conclude that he may not be
free, for he knows that he was created, and thus is unlike that
stone. From this some theologians have arrived at the doctrine
of predestination, meaning that all that man wished to do was-
pre-programmed within him by the deity in the same way one
might today program a computer or a robot to act in a certain
way. One who. accepts the Jewish idea of creation ex nihilo runs
the risk of putting himself in the position of never knowing for
130 Alfred Rosenberg

certain if he is truly free, or, like Leibnitz’ stone, only possibly

free.
To return to our two German terms, the Jewish-Catholic
idea of being suggests that Sosein best explains existence, that
man lives in a world as given by the creator. Nordic man lives
in a world described by Dasein, a world which from all eternity
was equally the property of man and God. Nordic man’s world
demands that God and man become aides in the pre­
determined struggle of order against disorder.
Man and God are equally determined with a prejudice
against chaos and toward cosmos. Luther read this idea, making
man God’s "high ally" but then was unable or unwilling to do
anything about it.
Rosenberg was nearly as critical of Luther as he was of
Catholicism for both accepted the creation ex nihilo from the
Old Testament. Luther was more culpable because he was a
racial German and he should have known better. [Myth of the
Twentieth Century, pp.l84ff], The Roman Church sought to
serve the Jewish idea,, and it did so consciously, although later
scholars probably accepted this idea without thinking out the
other alternative and without giving thought to the differences
in consequences that result from pursuing the two different
premises.
Occasionally, some deep religious thinker of German
origin found, in the depths of his soul, a longing to return to the
racial ideal of his people. Then, a thinker like Eckhart would
reject the idea of creation from nothingness and return to the
concept of an eternal world. Luther’s rebellion was obviously
not as great in Rosenberg’s judgment as it had been in the
judgment of the Catholic Church at the time of the
Reformation (or perhaps even in the Catholic Church’s view
today). Luther had broken over a few externals (corruption)
and over a few generally meaningless points of doctrine
(transubstantiation or consubstantiation) but he retained the
 The Roman Catholic Church 131
same Jewish and other African and Hither Asiatic and Etruscan
roots. [Myth of the Twentieth Century, p.81].
Rosenberg concludes that by forcing Sosein on us instead
of Dasein the Roman Catholic Church made us "spiritual
cripples" whose only refuge would be within the folds of the
Roman Catholic Church. There is nowhere else to go for man
cannot be a high ally of the being who created him; he can only
be his toy or his pawn or his lackey. Man cannot communicate
with his creator directly because he is a low being. This is the
correct conclusion from creationist doctrines, and Luther and
Calvin knew it, preaching it thus in their theologies. Created
man cannot climb toward God. [Myth of the Twentieth Century,
pp.238ff].
The reason that man cannot earn salvation according to
Rosenberg’s reasoning, is not because of "original sin" but
because of man being the creation of God. Luther and Calvin
were correct in their assessments of man’s predicament within
the context of Jewish-Catholic teaching. [Myth of the Twentieth
Century, p.183]. Unfortunately, they arrived at this correct
conclusion through faulty reasoning. Perhaps they knew better,
ihat is, they may have known the true reason (creation) why
man could not approach God but clouded it in the rhetoric of
original sin rather than telling men the truth. They were
unwilling to break with Jewish-Catholic teaching on this vital
point and so allowed man to wallow in the mire of separation
from God. They offered instead of mediation through the many
devices of the Roman Catholic Church (indulgences, confession,
prayers, other forms of intercession) the idea of healing and
redeeming grace offered by a condescending and pitiful God
gratuitously given by Him for reasons known only to Him. [Myth
of the Twentieth Century, p.615].
In Rosenberg’s judgment Luther and Calvin attacked
only one symptom instead of the real problem. By transferring
the method of salvation to God and by democratizing the clergy
132 Alfred Rosenberg

they robbed the Roman Catholic Church of its monopoly on

methods of salvation. That may have undermined the power of
the Roman Church, but it really did nothing for man. He was,
more than ever, at the mercy of God. He could not buy
salvation through the indulgences and other devices sold by a
religious establishment. He was thrown into the hands of a deity
and still could not determine his fate. Only by returning to the
non-creationist doctrines of Aryan-Nordic theology could he
escape this cruel fate. [Protestantische Rompilger, p.49J.
No creationist was willing to allow man to stand proud
and free before God; this was permitted only in non-creationist
theologies. No existing Christian religion had, up until
Rosenbetg’s time, dared to contradict this fundamental Jewish-
Catholic teaching. By leaping into native, nationalistic theology
man could escape the grasp of predestination and fate. The
rejection of creationism would become the pillar of Nordic
Christianity. This represented the true theology of Jesus. This
was his message, but it had been obscured by the Roman-
Etruscan-Jewish-Asiatic pre-set doctrines. This was the reason
Christ had to die, and why Paul had to become Christian. This
is why orthodox Judaism feared original Christianity. It was the
reason that Christ had fixed the idea of co-terminous existence
in traditional Nordic-Aryan religion. It was the only way Nordic
Christianity could defeat the "Canaan Monstrosity." [Myth of
the Twentieth Century, p.683].
Nordic religion echoed true Western man and his
civilization. The doctrine that held that salvation was possible
only through the intercession and good offices of the Roman
Catholic Church was antithetical to Nordic thought. That
doctrine was the invention of the Asiatic peoples. It was
promulgated by the Jews with their emphasis on the exclusive
nature of their religion.
Nordic religion posited the unfolding of the human soul
in a way that encouraged a "flight" to the Godhead, man to
 The Roman Catholic Church 133
man, equal to equal. The retreat from the wrath of an angry
God was the invention of non-Aryan peoples and was an idea
alien to Nordic men. German mystics had found it necessary to
retreat within their own selves, finding "strength from above"
only by meditating within their souls. There, deep within their
own being Meister Eckhart and his followers found true peace.
They discovered that "Divine Valhalla arose from the infinite,
misty-vastness buried within the mortal breast." This led them
to discover "the imperishable freedom of the soul (which) ...
constituted saving grace." Necessarily, this discovery was
revolutionary vis a vis Catholicism and has been a history of
rebellion against Roman Catholic teachings. The authoritarian
ways of the Roman Church have not been strong enough to
oppose this idea because Western racial stirrings have been too
strong, having been based in 5000 years of tradition and belief.
[Myth of the Twentieth Century, pp.252’53].
The Reformation and the Renaissance were not periods
of culmination of Western spiritual values; neither were they
the highlights of true culture. They were periods of social
upheaval and of external stagnation and cultural despair. They
were periods when true religion was being born, but the agony
of these birth pains did not guarantee that belief would be
made true to the Word. The maturation of the correct theology
has continued in the West through present-day.
Rosenberg envisioned the emergence of true religion, the
reconstitution of the message of Jesus, coming in the Third
Reich. He argued that the National Socialist age would be a
lime of German national rebirth in all fields. It was to be a
time of suppression and rejection of all alien ideas. It was to be
a time when true spiritual freedom would result from the
rejection of Jewish-Catholic myths of creation. It was to be a
time when the prerequisites for a Nordic Christianity would be
present.
134 Alfred Rosenberg

Then, man would turn toward the free self which could
look for and discover his racially motivated ideas of God and
theology. Protestantism as well as Catholicism would have to
fear these changes in theology, for each had grounded itself in
the myth of creation as taught by Judaism.
Men would reject the doctrines of Jewish Christianity not
because they are physically or psychologically compelled to do
so, but, to the contrary, because the physical and psychological
threats that had impelled them toward an alien myth will have
been removed. Rosenberg taught that the state’s role was more
that of acting as an agent to prevent spiritual perversion by
interposing its power between the Jewish-inspired churches and
men than by forcing men to believe in something. The state
would guarantee that men would be free to accept that which
was racially determined by five millennia of history. They would
come to know themselves as Aryans.
Aryan religion was not directed at blacks or Asians, Jews
or Mediterraneans, Alpines or Celts. It was to be designed only
at those whose racial history preconditioned them to accept it:
those of Aryan-Nordic ancestry.
 The Nordic Christian Church

In Alfred Rosenberg’s view a gigantic battle was being

aged in Germany for the control of men’s souls. At stake was
~e total German character. The ancient orthodoxy of Rome
as alien to the German soul. A new, totally Aryan, orthodoxy
- as needed. This new religion was to be based on western, not
.astern^ values. The center piece of the Nordic religion was
.’esus the Hero, a God worthy of Europeans. This Christ was
be opposite of the humbled, resurrected Christ preached by
Saul (St. Paul). Rosenberg devoted an entire chapter in The
Wyth, of the Twentieth Century to the Nordic Church, yet, after
•.riting this lengthy dissertation, Rosenberg admitted that he
-as not certain precisely what the new church would be like
[Myth, p.14]. As Rosenberg wrote, "the greatest task that
remains to this century is to satisfy the Nordic racial soul with
a German People’s Church." [Myth, p.615].
As in other cases, Rosenberg’s treatment of the subject
is primarily negative. He is much more adept at telling his
reader what something is not than he is at telling what a thing
is. We must begin by summarizing Rosenberg’s objections to
traditional Christianity of both Roman Catholic and Lutheran
Protestant varieties.
Rosenberg argued that originally Nordic man was not
interested in philosophy. "When the German man first entered
into the world he kept away from philosophy completely.
However, that which is most significant for his nature, that is,
the dynamic character of his physical and spiritual life, joined
of necessity With an antipathy to any kind of rigid monotheism
and church dogmatism of the kind that was forced on him ...
[these things] became a weakness at a time when the original
age of his race ended. While the old gods were dying Nordic
man was still searching .... The fundamental fact of the Nordic
European spirit is that a distinction between two worlds is made
consciously or unconsciously. [Myth, pp. 130-31].
136 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg rejected the idea, following his understanding

of traditional Nordic-Aryan theology, of creation ex nihilo. Such
a creationist view of God makes it impossible for man to bridge
the gap that necessarily exists between Creator and his creation.
This Rosenberg views as an Asian-Jewish idea, passing from
Paul (Saul) through the Roman Church to Luther. He
preferred, instead, to assume that the Aryans were correct in
their five thousand year old tradition that God and man existed
co-extensively and co-terminously; that God did not create man
and that God and man are "high allies" in combatting evil.
The doctrine of one, already completed, revelation, as
taught by Jews and Christians alike, was, to Rosenberg, a static
idea. It denied the possibility of progress and human
advancement. He used terms such as, "eternal flow of nature"
and "dynamic command of life" to illustrate the importance of
continual change. Rosenberg showed himself here to be a
product of twentieth century existentialism. Revelation, like
man, is always becoming. It is not a single event and it will
never be complete. [Myth, pp. 134-35,140-41]. Religion was not
limited by the events of history. It was spiritually independent.
It would assert itself separately for each people, nation, age,
circumstance and character. [Weltanschauung un Glaubenslehre,
p. 9].
Rosenberg assumes that all being (Dasein) has a built-in
prejudice against disorder and that God and man cooperate in
building order (cosmos) in the face of disorder (chaos). There
never was a time when there existed only God and nothingness.
Rather, there was a time when disorder generally prevailed.
But all being began at eternity. The idea of God the Creator
(Jehovah) began when the ancient Semites were looking for a
device to make their national deity supreme over all other
deities. Only a Jewish Jehovah would create something (Sosein,
dependent being) out of nothing. Creation made man
dependent on this deity for his very existence. This was true for
 The Nordic Christian Church 137

ill material reality. Man could be reduced to nothingness, for

« was from nothing that he had come and from which he had
been fabricated. The humbled man sought relief and protection
for an essentially angry and capricious deity. Thus, the clerics,
i class separate (Levites in Judaism) from other mortals, gained
control over all men.
Roman Catholicism, Rosenberg argued, accepted this
*Canaan monstrosity" and set itself up as the only true mediator
between fallen man and God. It had effectively created and
Rjstained that the myth that without the magic spells and
charms, indulgences and the like, that only the priesthood could
dispense, man could have no hope to be saved. Man was
reduced in character so that he had to love, practice charity,
deny his ego, swallow his pride, reject his nobility, be humble
ind contrite. In general, man was required to reduce his being
to the lowest possible level. The Church grew and so did a
consequent hierarchy whose final authority was vested in a
pope. Because he had power of salvation or damnation over all
human beings, kings included, the pope grew in temporal power
and prestige. Inevitably, corruption grew. By the Middle Ages
most of the operatives, popes and clerics alike, had been fully
corrupted. „
A few scholars rejected the papal claims to sovereignty
over all men in all ways, and some even denied the papal power
to "loose and to bind" in heaven as well as on earth. A few
retreated from the world and found solace only in private
meditation. Luther’s Reformation sensed that the corruption of
the Roman Church made it vulnerable to revolution. But the
early reformers broke only on matters of church power, church
hierarchy and church dogma. These were not the important
elements. [Myth, pp. 183-85].
Rosenberg blamed Luther especially for his lack of
courage. Luther had stopped short of making the major
adjustments needed. He knew of the "perfidy" of the Jews, but
138 Alfred Rosenberg

he continued to accept both the Old Testament and the

falsification of Jesus in the Epistles of the Jew Paul (Saul).
Rosenberg believed that Luther, as a racial German attuned to
Nordic impulses and traditions, truly knew that Paul had
fabricated the message that he had attributed to Jesus.
Rosenberg suspected that Luther knew that Paul had
been sacrificed by the Jews. The Jews had designated one of
the most able of their number to take over and to subvert
Christianity. This was done so that the Jews could take over the
growing new religion and manipulate its dogmas for its own
purposes. They wished to make these ideas compatible with
Judaism. Judaism remained as the elite religion of the Chosen-
People (Jews) while Christianity of the Roman type was a mass
religion which the few, the Jews, could manipulate. Christianity
was the tool of the Jews to control Gentiles. As Gentiles
worshipped their God, the Supreme Being was, simultaneously,
the central figure of Judaism as well. Each time a Christian
paid homage to his God, he paid homage to Jehovah of the
Jews as well. The Jews had never wanted Gentiles to convert to
their national religion, but they did seek to enslave and control
Gentiles. The foundation of Christianity had given them a
^perfect opportunity. Gentiles would be Christians, and
Christians would accept, through Saul, all of the Old Testament
myths and beliefs. Rosenberg wrote, "The Old Testament as a
book of religious instruction must be abolished once and for all.
With its destruction will end the unsuccessful attempt of the last
1500 years to make us all spiritual Jews." [Myth, p.683].
Justin Martyr, an early Christian writer, had been the
first to realize that the true Christianity was antithetical to
Judaism. In his Dialogue with the Jew Trypho (c.146, A.D.) Justin
had argued for the clear separation of Christianity from
Judaism. The early Church Fathers, many of whom were Jews,
and many of whom were disciples of Paul, were prepared to
charge Justin with heresy. The Romans killed Justin for his
 The Nordic Christian Church 139

iiigion. He was ever known as Justin Martyr, and not as St.

. ixstin. The fact of his martyrdom could not be denied, and
lose killed for their religion were ordinarily considered to be
•aints in the Christian Church. Many hated Justin for his
'eterodox views, and thus they played a technical game. He
-ould be recognized for his death, but not called a saint be
-•ause of his theological views.
Christianity, Justin argued, was something quite different
'*rom Judaism. Jesus had come to restore true religion and to
denounce the hypocrisy of the religion of the Hebrews. For that
crime Jesus had been crucified. Justin Martyr had taught that
Christians should avoid Jews and view themselves as a religion
wholly distinct from Judaism-a religion built on different ideas
and premises from Judaism. For that Justin was martyred.
Luther had freed man from the shackles of the Roman
Church and from its requirements such as confession and
indulgences. He failed to become sufficiently revolutionary. His
use of creationism enchained man again, this time to that
gratuitous gift of God, healing and redeeming grace. Man was
still impossibly removed from God. He was creature dependent
upon his creator. His lot was no better than it had been under
Catholicism.
Lutheranism had failed to continue Luther’s attack upon
Rome. It had faltered from a lack of courage and conviction
and because the church had become rigid and ossified. It had
created its own bureaucracy and hierarchy and had thus been
conquered by the Roman spirit. The new Lutheran myth was
nothing more than a revived Roman myth, complete with all of
the worst features of Christianity against which Luther had
protested so vigorously. Luther had begun a revolution but his
successors had failed to carry through with all that he had
recommended. After 400 years Lutheranism still resembled
Roman Catholicism in all but acceptance of papal authority.
The Reformation moved toward Rome. Lutheran church men
140 Alfred Rosenberg

were concerned far more with holding on to their power than

with the de-Judaization and de-Romanizing of Christianity.
With the failure of Lutheranism to Germanize
Christianity came also the Judaization of the Evangelical
Church. Luther himself had loathed Jews. He warned of their
conspiratorial propensities, but his successors had not heeded
his warnings. The Church had lost out to Jewish universalism,
and in doing so, had lost its mission to the Germans.
Communism, Masonism and bourgeois democracy were in
reality all Jewish conspiracies. Had the Evangelical Church
followed Luther’s warnings it would have avoided all Jewish
ideas. In part because the Evangelical Church was spiritually
weak it had failed to resist atheistic communism, a point made
by popes beginning with Leo XIII about the Roman Catholic
Church. The Lutheran priesthood had been captured by
Masons, allies and co-conspirators with the Jews. Lutheran
ritual had been taken over by Masonic ideas and teachings.
Lutheranism had sold out to Jewish bolshevism and Jewish
bourgeois democracy. These are the major points made in
Rosenberg’s Treason Against Luther and Myths in the Twentieth
Century.
Rosenberg repeated, but in stronger and more absolute
terms, Luther’s call for the purgation of what he called near
eastern, Roman and Etruscan themes from Christianity. He
referred to many Roman Catholic traditions as the products of
"Semitic fatalism or Syrian fatalistic magic." He looked at the
pope as the "chief magician" in a magic based religion. [Myth,
p.397]. He looked at the dogma and teachings of the Roman
version of Christianity as nothing more than superstition. It
taught internationalism instead of nationalism. It made no
attempt to adjust its teachings to the special needs and situation
of Nordic man. It taught submissiveness to the proud Nordic
man.
 The Nordic Christian Church 141

Roman Catholicism taught that man should practice

charity (love) toward those who were unable to help
themselves. Its greatest interest was the outcasts of society: the
halt, the lame, the blind, the mentally retarded, and the
mentally incapacitated. It loved the cripple more than the
physically sound and the mentally retarded more than the
genius. Its teachings sickened the strong man by attempting to
make him sympathetic to the defective. It taught sentimentality
its worst. Misplaced sympathy boded evil for Christian Nordic
nations in the future. The German character was disposed to
4Ct more in accord with the laws of natural selection. Aryans
<new that the weak, neurotic, mentally unbalanced and other
defectives must die off rather than to allow them to enter the
gene pool. The state should aid the healthy citizens and not the
’nfirm. Rosenberg’s perfect man was noble, honorable, and
prepared to fight for tribe and nation. [Blut und Ehre, p.156;
Wyth, p.560]. ’’The teachings of a universal love and of the
equality of all human beings before God and of democratic
numan rights founded neither on race nor on national honor
were the bases on which Europe developed. [Thus Europe]
became the protector of the inferior, the sick, the handicapped,
and of the criminal and the nasty character [Myth, p.169].
Where men were not handicapped, that is, were born
whole, the Asiatic-Roman-Jewish Church conspired to make
them spiritual cripples. The doctrine of original sin held that no
man was noble as he came naked into the world. Just as
miracles might make the physically impaired man whole, so
some magic of the Church might make men spiritually whole.
The German people, in Rosenberg’s teaching, were not
enslaved by the doctrine of original sin. They were not tainted
upon arrival in this world and the sins of the fathers did not
descend to the sons over many generations. Original sin was
incompatible with original nobility which Nordic man accepted.
All Nordic man needed to regain his nobility was a healthy and
142 Alfred Rosenberg

full dose of Nordic tradition. [Protestantische Rompilger, pp. 26-

32],
Rosenberg made no claim to be a new messiah or a
counter-revolutionary himself; neither did he claim to be a
"voice crying in the wilderness" to prepare for the new type­
forming leader. He merely anticipated his coming for German
was now at a period in its history when the new leader could
find credence for his claims. The national socialist state was
dedicated to the guarantee of "true spiritual freedom," ready to
use its protective power to protect the seeker by interposing
itself between the individual and the religion that constantly
sought to coerce him into accepting its dogmas.
The ideas that stirred Luther were, for the most part,
false issues. Matters of faith consumed his energy. He became
embroiled in such arguments as those of transubstantiation over
consubstantiation. These, and indeed, nearly all of Luther’s
famous theses for debate, were false issues. The real issue at
hand was the de-Judaization of the Church and the re­
Germanization of it. He was unwilling to transvaluate values
and to remake Christianity in the image and likeness of Nordic
man, with honor as the key virtue. [Myth, pp.390-91].
But the task of creating a satisfactory alternative to the
traditional churches had not been performed to Rosenberg’s
satisfaction, at least to date. "As yet no religious talent has
appeared in any of the German lands to set before us a new
religious type in distinction to the existing ones. This is
important because no responsible German is entitled to ask
those who are still bound in faith to their existing churches to
abandon them." [Myth, p.599].
In Germany the traditional pagan religion had as much
influence on the religious makeup of man as had Roman
Christianity. The old myths of the German gods Wotan, Loki,
and others had a powerful influence on the development of the
national character. While the gods were myths (i.e., lies), they
 The Nordic Christian Church 143

•. *e like unto Germans. The emphasis was on personal, tribal

J national honor, those noble sentiments that uplift Nordic
in. Although there was no theological value in German
ihology, there was considerable value in the creation and
lintenance of the noble Aryan virtues that marked that
igion. [Myth, pp. 162-63].
Against this background Rosenberg suggested, in broad
'Okes, the attributes of the New Nordic Christianity.The new
arch must recreate and honor the traditional Nordic values,
nly a religion that sprang from German soil would be suited
the German character. Only a natively grown religion would
.cognize honor as the preeminent value. Only a native
>."thern European religion could ensure true social justice and
-mral fellowship. [Weltanschauung und Glaubenslehre, pp.14-
5]
Much would be gone and few familiar signposts would
cmain after the purging of Jewish ideas along with those other
suuscan, Hither Asiatic and African practices that had marked
be Roman Church for nearly 1900 years. Fortunately,
Bosenberg believed, the German national soul, implicit only in
members of the Nordic race who had not been corrupted by a
•'astardization of the race, would sustain man and he would
■mythically know what was right for the members of his race.
Myth, pp. 134-35; 140-41].
Rosenberg would revitalize Christianity by tying it to that
•• hich one knows deep in the recesses of his soul. The nearly
wo thousand years of Jewish-Catholic domination of the West
nave not yet destroyed the ability of the soul to respond to the
call to truth. This suggests an amazing resiliency of the Nordic
soul. Its regenerative capacities, were in Rosenberg’s view
sufficient to regain true religion.
The spark of truth had remained, almost miraculously,
aeen nurtured over the interim by the writings of a few men
like Justin Martyr and Meister Eckhart. The heresies that the
144 Alfred Rosenberg

Roman Church had suppressed so forcefully over centuries

contained the germs of truth out of which a true Nordic type­
forming personality could reconstruct the Christian beliefs
championed by Jesus.
Each creative drive of a "heretic" writer like the Cathars,,
Meister Eckhart or Martin Luther moved the Nordic race ever
closer to the goal, even if that goal remained somewhat
obscure. Each soul that poured out its racial longings for truth
had its role in reconstructing Christianity along Aryan-Nordic
lines. In the depths of time and space souls of Nordic men had
been dispersed and scattered. The "inner light" of historical
Nordic racial type-formers drew men away, inexorably, from the
Jewish-Roman externals and toward the truth that remained
within. [Myth, pp. 13-15; 129-34].
Rosenberg, in his practical role as Minister of Culture,
used the resources of his office to redirect studies of ancient
Aryan and Northern European religions toward the counter­
revolution. The knowledge these scholars could bring to bear on
the truth of ancient legends and epics would enhance the new
religion. These truths offered insights into cosmology,
metaphysics, epistemology and ethics that would form the
groundwork and scaffolding against which these trappings could
be added. Such investigations had to be carried out in an
atmosphere of freedom of spirit. Men whose contributions
would be causal had to be liberated from Jewish-Roman
dogmas, canons of law and authorities such as the pope.
God does not compel man to accept either his being or
his truths by either a gratuitous gift of grace or by forcing
compliance through predestination. Only the truth known by the
heart in a mystical way can compel man to become God’s high
ally. We must emphasize that Rosenberg, following Eckhart,
freely and whole-heartedly accepted the idea of William of
Ockham [c. 1285-1349] that differences of creed are of the
present world only and have no correspondence in heaven.
 The Nordic Christian Church 145

.©□sequent to this Ockham emphasized the idea of living a

. Jod life. To Rosenberg, living a good life is synonymous with
oainment of salvation and with doing all that God requires of
■Jen. He who is true to self acts honorably and it is the honor
x)de that formed the supreme value of the Nordic race,
-eading a good life means little more than knowing one’s true
eh and acting so that one may freely confront that self and so
Tat he may permit others to see what he has honed to
'•erfection by ideas, philosophy and acts. Rosenberg quoted
5ckhart, as, "They soul will bear no fruit until thou hast
Accomplished thy task and neither God nor they self will
_b andon thee if thou hast brought thine to the world.
Otherwise, thou wilt have no peace and thou wilt bear no fruit."
Myth, p.225].
The Son of God was truly born into this world.
Rosenberg has no quarrel with that idea or with the more
,eneral idea of a transcendent God, provided only that creation
■»e kept out of the discussion. He followed Eckhart in assuming
do at God became God-man not to expiate the sins of Adam or
of man, but to bring man to a full realization of himself. As he
quoted Eckhart in The Myth of the Twentieth Century, "I answer
(the question, why was God born into the world): so that God
will be born in the soul" of each man. When man allows god
io enter his soul he ignores time, for time no longer has
meaning. The soul ascends and stands full and proud before the
throne of God. The soul knows God and God knows it. There
is nothing concealed any longer from the soul, and the soul is
now naked before God. The soul can know whatever it needs
io know and it knows fully and completely. God reserves
nothing from his high ally. [Myth, p.224].
The noble soul becomes the supreme value of Nordic
religion. It is the axis around which all things revolve. It is the
beginning and the end of all things. The noble soul exists only
in the heroic and proud man. It reinforces the supreme value
146 Alfred Rosenberg

of the race, honor. It provides a wonderful, mysterious, mythical

experience for the honorable man. This sublime experience
dwarfs anything that another religion attempts to offer. It is
available only to the Nordic man.
Other values revolve around the noble soul, deriving
their strength from it. Like Rosenberg, Eckhart despises the
saccharine-sweet love that forms the basis of Jewish-Catholic
religion. But the love that is interconnected with the noble soul
has the quality of strength. It is the love of God, that vital link
with the deity. Positive love in the Nordic sense enables man
to rise to god, breaking through all barriers to the deity and
forcing the vital bond of equals--God and man.
While one always has the assurance that he is a member
of the Nordic race, and certainly derives some satisfaction from
that membership, he must bear in mind that the Nordic path of
God is a lonely one. Rosenberg calls Meister Eckhart’s sermon,
The Loneliness of the Soul, "the most beautiful testimony to
German consciousness of personality," in print. This was
representative of Eckhart’s personal isolation that was
consequent to his search for a new, positive supreme value for
his people, but its spirituality transcends both Eckhart’s
experience and the years that have passed sine it was written.-
It warns the German that his search for truth is not only highly
individualistic, but quite lonely. He cannot pause to receive
immediate comfort from the crowd. His only companion on the
trip is the spirit of his race which reassures him that he travels
a road that others, past, present and future, must travel to
attain their own spiritual beings. [Myth, pp.222-27].
The noble soul is an aristocratic soul. Perhaps nowhere
else has this idea of aristocracy in spiritual beings been stated
so clearly and so forcefully as in Rosenberg. One must respect
himself. One takes some satisfaction in the attainment of
spiritual purification and in the love relationship he establishes
with God. He has a healthy admiration for this great and
I
The Nordic Christian Church 147

t caique substance he has become through self-fulfillment. The

Nordic man prides himself in that being which is unique, that
a. that being which alone can be purified and fulfilled in God.
Eckhart placed little emphasis on compassion as a virtue. He
rejected the superior position given this value in Roman
Catholicism. Eckhart defined compassion as an abandonment
of self. Such a rejection of the purified spirit of the aristocratic,
aoble soul would constitute an affront to the God which
participated in the making of that spiritual essence. To act
compassionately toward a lesser or equal being means that man
<uuid have to lower his new-found, superior essence and that
be cannot do. Compassion is a virtue, like the Roman-Jewish
virtue of love, that can not be accorded a high position in the
transvaluated values of the new Nordic Christianity.
If we approach the same points from another direction,
-e can say that Rosenberg viewed Ego and God as spiritual
polarities. The noble souls is constantly in flight to and from
God. It flies toward "peace in God" which he equates with
’peace in and of itself." Each act of love and unity between god
and man is a complete, self-contained amalgamation. It
produces a simultaneous concentration and diffusion of dynamic
strength. It diffuses from God toward all the lonely, individual
spirits which approach God with a nobility and courage of
spirit; it concentrates in each individual receptive spirit, bringing
it to a renewed state of knowledge and wisdom and purification.
This reception-diffusion unification with God is accepted and
felt as both a bequest and as a source of self-consciousness and
that is the uniquely Nordic myth of religion. It is verbalized, but
the description falls woefully short of telling us about the
experience, let alone explaining this phenomenon. The Roman-
Jewish religion denies both the Ego-God polarity and the
dynamics of interaction between human and deity.
Rosenberg assumed that each race had its own, unique
approach to religion. This is the Volk element. The way Nordic
148 Alfred Rosenberg

peoples approached God was of an ("aristocratic") order far

different from the way Jews or Romans or Africans approached
God. Each of these races would differ the other in its theology.
For several reasons Rosenberg chose not to pursue the
theologies of non-Aiyan races. For one, Rosenberg believed
that one had to be a member of a race to understand its
theology fully, and Rosenberg was a Nordic. For another, he
had no interest in their religious beliefs, for he was quite
definite in his belief that one was foolish to seek
comprehension of ideas that, for racial reasons, were alien to
his own civilization. For a third, Rosenberg thought that the
Western civilization had already had enough of an alien
exposure in the miscellany that coalesced to Roman
Catholicism. These alien religious elements he discussed, and
we have examined, separately. [Myth, p.67],
A people-Volk in German-knows a religion intuitively
because the theology, like all other major traits and habits,
becomes ingrained in it after a period of time. The Germanic
value of honor which underlies all other values at all levels was
developed over a long period of time in the Aryan and Nordic
cultures dating far back into antiquity. A people cannot reject
what is its heritage without altering its essence and prostituting
all that past generations have stood for. A people is in the
middle of a continuum which it dares not break, for it falls to
it from the past and it requires that the people pass it along to
future generations as yet unborn. It is far more than a kind of
family treasure chest that he can waste. Even if some, perhaps
many, generations should repudiate their racial heritage so long
as they remain racially uncontaminated their trove of values
and preferences from the past remains.
The overall values of the Nordic race cast a mold into
which the religion must fit. The supreme value, by definition,
requires that there be no values in the religion (or elsewhere)
that contradict or clash with it. The values of a people
 The Nordic Christian Church 149
determine its religion. This is not a marxist historical
determinism here. Rather, the Volk community developed, long
'■‘efore Christianity, a total structure much like the Greek polis.
This community encompasses all other human activities and
.astittitions without itself being encompassed by any. It is a total
uid systematic approach bringing about an integrated man.
That being stands in direct and marked contrast to the divisions
nan is now fitted into, e.g., "economic man," "social man," and
religious man." As a totality the community concerns itself
*'ith all human activities by assuming that man does not cease,
-i some arbitrary point, being "economic man" and immediately
puts on the garb of "religious man." Honor and duty bound
■nan is always and everywhere "religious man" and "ethical
'nan." Ethical considerations affect how man behaves in his
economics. Supreme values determine what religious man may
accept in his theology. The supreme values of the race were
iorged on the anvil of all human behavior of the race. There is
a reciprocal relationship among all of man’s various institutions,
values and activities. [Myth, pp.67-71].
Christianity arrived after the values had been created.
Nordic man found it impossible to accept certain things that
Roman-Jewish Christianity taught because these ideas had been
hammered out on a far different anvil. Christianity bent to a
considerable extent as we have already shown in discussing
Rosenberg’s criticisms of the Roman Church. Many symbols
were changed into a Germanic form and many ideas were cast
in the Nordic mold because the essence of the Roman Church
was not fixed. It was transparent, reflecting, as was necessary
and appropriate, Asian, Hither Asian, African Etruscan, Jewish,
or Germanic values and ideas. But it retained a few of its
Asiatic trappings and essentials as it moved northward. Some of
these violated the conscience of Nordics. [Myth, pp.77-81].
Nonetheless, Christianity triumphed and Nordic racial
(Volk) values were sublimated, but not destroyed. These values
150 Alfred Rosenberg

will underlie the Nordic Christianity. Rosenberg believes that

these unique Volk conceptions will form the basis of a religion
that will attract only Germans because it fits only their national
culture as developed over 5000 years of racial consciousness.
The Nordic Christian will speak of honor as the value
which will predetermine Germany’s strength. In that sign,
Rosenberg argued, Germany will conquer. The will always
begin at that point, and all things will be judged against a
standard of honor. Courage is a closely related secondary value
meant to mandate that one behave honorably. One will perform
honorable acts because of the third value, the sense of
obligation we call duty. If there is a trinity of Nordic values it
is: honor, courage and duty. These are the essentials of
religion.
The Nordic conception of personalized Volk religion
mitigates against extremes in the codification of religion. The
Pauline emphasis on law and canons of theology and rules that
are forever fixed were a source of anxiety to Justin Martyr. As
a Nordic spokesman, Justin knew that only an inferior breed of
people needed written, codified law. The race that had true
ethical standards because of personal purification in the sight
of God needed no extensive written law. Each man knew
instinctively, mythically what was required of him. The law need
not exist and neither did man need coercive power. An honor
code directed man to do what he must with and to all men and
to and with his God. He did these things because duty called
from deep inside.
Only a corrupt and bastardized race with no racial sense,
no honor code and no sense of duty immersed itself in complex
codes in religion. Despite having the most complex of all
religious codes, the Hebrews of the Old Testament and the
Jewish-Roman Christians of the corrupted New Testament
found sin to be common among their subjects. They despised
free men because free men need no codes. Canons of law are.
 The Nordic Christian Church 151

jr slaves and inferiors who tremble before their capricious and

mdictive gods. Strong, noble, honorable men stand erect and
'Odd before God. [Myth, pp.183-85].
The Volk spirit of the Germans provides them with a far
setter and infinitely less complex moral-religious system.
Bosenberg saw no reason to multiply laws without real
•ecessity. Complex laws suited other races. Simplicity of law
narked a superior race and a superior soul. Inferior races with
nferior souls required more laws to be written and codified.
Canons of theology fitted Jewish needs. But Germans could cut
hroiigh this, reducing religion to the highest values of the race
generally. Honor, courage and duty were sufficient as directions
‘or the Nordic civilization.
Rosenberg emphasized the cultural background of the
Nordic religion as the necessary pre-condition for the
■e.vitalization of Nordic Christianity. At the same time he
supported adjunct programs that looked for the true identity of
me Nordic peoples. This involved re-reading the long
overlooked Nordic epics and stories with an eye to bringing out
•Jiose things which were suggestive of religion. New translations'
of old tales were ordered. These would be annotated and
updated in language and expression so they conveyed in the
clearest possible language what the writers had in mind at the
time they were set down. New "inspired" translations sought to
convey cultural patterns and philosophical assumptions.
Symbols were clarified as to meaning for the German
community. Long lost manuscripts were searched out and
updated so the Volk could read them. Classes and instructional
programs were set up in German Volk themes. [Myth, pp.129-
34]. . ■
One of the most important of these activities was the
Volk festival. These were staged all over Germany. Local
customs, especially those with the pre-Christian Volk
orientation, were revived and underwritten by the Ministry of
152 Alfred Rosenberg

Culture. Native costumes and dress were revived and paraded

at special fairs. Dances and other physical activities were
encouraged. Anything that could be remotely connected with
pre-Christian religion was especially desirable.
These activities were instruments of cultural revival.
They were to encourage Germans to become involved with the
long-suppressed Volk culture. They were thought to revive the
moral sentiments of Nordic people who had lost touch with
their cultural heritage. Against that background the Volk soul
would reawaken. Long forgotten racial attachments would stir
within the Germans. These things would create the desire and
demand for a German religion. If the type-forming man were
to be anywhere within Germany he would see that the demand
existed for his power and his message. Rosenberg had long
believed that this figure was "hard by the door" and that, given
the least encouragement, he would appear to lead and inspire
the Germans in their new Nordic Christianity. The demand
would not be the artificial one created by advertising, but would
be the real one based in the racial stirrings of millions of
Germans.
Rosenberg saw such a leader as though in a vision.
Obviously, he would be a racial Nordic German whose heritage
was pure. He would be a great leader, a man of courage as well
as of honor. His vision would not be a personal one; rather, it
would be for his people. He would come not as a messiah or as
a deliverer, but as a type-forming personality whose inspiration
would impel others to look inwardly to find their own salvation
though a highly personal love of God. He would come only for
racial Germans. His message would not inspire or move
members of other races.
The type-former would draw on the great type-formers
of the past such as Justin Martyr, Meister Eckhart and Luther,
but his message would be his as well. It would be the spirit of
the people. In Nordic nations law and custom were never the
 The Nordic Christian Church 153

■roduct of king alone. He dared not promulgate things as did

he despotic kings of Asian, African or Roman states. The king
~ erely affirmed what the Nordic community had already
.formed by its actions. So it is with Nordic religion, past and
?resent. The people commit themselves spiritually and reflect
he racial essence of Nordic peoples. The type-former gives the
.ommitment substance and depth and perspective. He reassures
die faithful. [Myth, pp.183-85].
The religion would be, as suggested above, highly
personal and generally devoid of form in the conventional
sense. It would have a few written laws or canons of faith. It
would not permit the establishment of a priesthood nor allow
elaborate rituals to be developed. Nothing roughly
corresponding to indulgences, sacraments and the like would be
permitted. Few books would be required. Those books that
would be used largely historical and biographical, concentrating
on the great ideas, people and events out of Germany’s past.
Whatever ritual and law there would be would fall in the
category of the remainder of one’s racial origins. Pageants that
glorified the past, such as Volk festivals would be reminders of
what people thought and how they lived in former times, but
they would not be religion per se.
The religion would stress the importance of the inner
strength and personal commitment to the supreme values of the
nation. There would be great reciprocity between religion and
politics. Religion would be a simplified return to the revisionist
message of the Nordic Christ. Precisely what else would emerge
from the counter-revolution of Nordic culture and religion
would be determined by the type-former. Certainly, the Nordic
Church would avoid the scholastic hair-splitting over non-
essentials such as the nature of communion.
On the great questions, those essential to the Nordic
religion, there would be no compromise. Rosenberg denied
creation ex nihilo and all attendant ideas. This he saw as flowing
154 Alfred Rosenberg

from the great Nordic soul. It predated even written history that
the world and some function of the soul are eternal with God.
So it had been written in the Aryan philosophies of India and
Persia and in the writings of men of the Christian era like Mani
and Justin Martyr, It was to be found in the Nordic legends of
Germany and Scandinavia.
Aryan religion is made up, according to Rosenberg’s
design, of the awareness of being Aryan. It is a form of true
racial pride. It cannot be other than racial for the Nordic
peoples are children of the light. They stand in stark contrast to
the other races which are primarily, if not exclusively, the
children of darkness and materiality. No other link is expressive
and no other point of contact is necessaty for what is the
Nordic equivalent of salvation.
To the degree that houses of worship are necessary they
would be more like colleges designed to educate Nordic man on
how to liberate his racial self. They might serve a second
function as places wherein man could be freed from the
limitations of time and space while uniting with the Godhead.
However, man can do this anywhere, not just in a designated
house of worship. The new religion would clearly be a German
national religion. It would not make universal appeals to non­
Germans, nor would it see the brotherhood of man as a reality.
It would be very much a part of an entire movement,
encompassing all aspects of German life. Non-Germans would
not understand it for it would be based wholly in the German
racial-blood-volk experience. If one did not share in these
elements he would be lost in trying to establish a connection
with the Nordic Ko/fc-church.
The Protestant Reformation had suggested, without
wholly pursuing, this idea. It was not as simple as removing the
Lutheran churches from the control of Rome, nor was it wholly
tied with the idea of the creation of an established church. The
Reformation carried with it the rejection of ties with all things
 The Nordic Christian Church 155

Roman.' The new churches were to seek nationalistic ties with

the spiritual heritage of the peoples they served. Without the
rising tide of nationalism the Protestant Reformation might not
have succeeded. Lutheran theology lacked the rhetoric of
rationalism, but accepted most of its conclusions. It was willing
to be carried along by its sentiments without fully articulating
its slogans. Still, its theology was tied to the Roman church and
traditional Christianity. It may not effect any major theological
revolutions that can be ascribed to national sentiments.
Rosenberg would have carried the reformation a step
further. All things not necessarily tied to the Nordic heritage
would be rejected. National Socialism would have to render
Christianity acceptable to Nordic ideals. Those things which
supported nationalism and which supported the nation-state
would be kept. The National Socialist state would support
those teachings which sustained Nordic virtues and which tied
in with Volk traditions..
Rosenberg would have considered adding to the canons
and reposits of faith Nordic writers whose reinforcement of
German spiritual values were useful and perhaps even
indispensable to the cause. He returned to the heritage of the
Nordic peoples which he argued was unique among nations.
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) had seen the
varieties of mankind as a blessing. The races (nationalities)
were as many varieties of plants in a flower garden. Each was
unique and each had its beautiful points and each had its ugly
ones. Each had its own unique aroma and essence. Like most
supemationalists, Herder was not prepared to wholly condemn
members of other groups. What he saw were the virtues of his
own species. Being of that variety gave one prejudices that
made him think that he was glad to be of that species, without
directly condemning the other races. He was not especially
interested in analyzing the other races.
156 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg created a hierarchy of races. The Germa

variety had a superior culture. All other races were indee.
unique, but they were also necessarily inferior. They possesses
virtues, but not in abundance. They lacked the hero>.
dimensions that were to be found among Nordic peoples.
No other race could possibly create as good or as.intense
a culture as the Aryan civilization had. Rosenberg attributed >
part of the success of the Nordics to their superior morality aix
value consciousness. Aryan morality had to be able to mate?
their other racially conscious accomplishments. Their moral! p
had to emphasize the racial qualities that the Germanic peoples
had developed within. The Aryan morality had to be willing
extol the race-virtues they had developed. It had to tx
essentially superior to others. This recognition of superiorin
must extend not only to man’s physical or mental abilities, bir
to his moral qualities. The Nordic racially-based morality hac
to recognize inherent characteristics, not in the solitary gooc
man, but in the solitary superior race.
Where the Christian churches had heretofore recognizee
the spiritual accomplishments of the good man by canonizing
him and by proclaiming him blessed and a saint, they had no*
to be prepared to do the same thing to a whole race. The kind
of distinction acknowledged between man before the fall anc
man after the fall from God’s grace was now to be made
between races. Indeed, the church had to be prepared to ever
condemn whole races, as in the case of the Jews. Between the
Nordic race at the top and the Jewish race at the bottom came
all other races in a perfect hierarchical order.
Needless to say, no orthodox Christian church was
prepared to do these things. Therefore Rosenberg had to
fabricate his^own church. Doubtless, had one of the churches
accepted these doctrines, there would have still been other
problems of dogma with which he would have had to contend.
 The Nordic Christian Church 157

- ould probably have been easier in the long run to invent a

?le religion than to revamp the existing churches.
In the short run, both Hitler and Rosenberg were willing
allow churches to accept some reforms while still existing
lin the National Socialist state. In the long run, the National
cialist revolution required that all things, surely theology
- uded, be wholly within the confines of National Socialist
oology. Religion was too important to matter to trust to non-
.ologues.
This was one of Mussolini’s abject to failures, so far as
senberg was concerned. He had bought peace with the
man Catholic Church, but he had failed to exercise control
er its ethical and political teachings. The National Socialist
^ders had no intention of repeating this mistake once their
eology had been completed.
A revolution in religion would have brought Germany to
□oint in history much like that wherein ancient civilizations
3d developed a priesthood that was synonymous with the
oiitical elite. In ancient religions the political leader was
pointed as God’s chosen one so he was dependent on religion
r his position. This idea was institutionalized by the Roman
atholic Church in Medieval times with the doctrine of jus
reni imperii, the right of the church to confirm or deny secular
jwers to rulers. The idea of legitimacy was advanced by
merging political and religious power. If one could establish
hat God speaks through the Fuhrer then anything that leader
-ould do would necessarily be of divine origin. Any anti-
olitical act would also be an anti-theological act, an offense
.gainst the Godhead who created or permitted the creation of
he state.
Ideological control was a vital element in the recreation
>f the Greek polis, a community wherein political, economic,
social and religious activities are all merged into one super-
ci ea. Religion and politics would become one mutually
158 Alfred Rosenberg

reinforcing system of regime and leader support. They wouk

operate in two ways and with two sets of assumptions, be
would necessarily arrive at the same conclusion and merge i*
the confluence of the state.
While the leadership of a new Nordic Christian Churcf
would necessarily be German, the leaders, especially Hitler ant
Rosenberg, expressed great admiration for the Jesur
organizational system. Himmler had organized the SS along tlx
lines of the Jesuit system of hierarchy and given it a Jesuit-like
semi-religious ritual. That was the elitist training for the secular
priesthood. The masses would be organized in a far differer.'
manner, for they were not to be trained in the same initiaie
rites as the SS.
The organization of the Nordic Christian Church woulc
have been a Roman-style hierarchical one. The SS would haw
served as an elitist directive force, although not necessarily as
a priesthood in the sense of a group that administers to the
masses. Those chosen to share the final truths and mysteries o’
National Socialism would have been initiated into those
experiences and final truths through the SS. The SS along with
Rosenberg’s Ministry of Culture certainly would have served as
the final censors of all religious publications.
Rosenberg would have founded the Nordic religion upor
a peasant base. Rosenberg had a strong and marked preference
for the German farmers and small town dwellers. To him, they
were the only true producers of wealth and the protectors of
the Volksgeist and Kultur. Urban life and city living dull the
perception of these fundamental concept for they are unnatural
conditions of Nordic man. The Volk is shown in a concrete way
in its medieval folk rituals and pageantry. The historical
research and archaeological skills of experts would be brought
to bear on the reconstruction of the folk ways, mores, customs
and traditions of the town or rural peasantry. Rosenberg-tied al1
of this together and formed the base of Nordic Christianity. He
 The Nordic Christian Church 159

■ jId have incorporated Medieval Volk rituals into the Nordic

■'istian Church.
Even medieval life had been corrupted despite the
eogth of the Volksgeist which opposed alien ideas. Witch
ms and burnings at the stake were part and parcel of Roman-
*ish-Christian teachings for Rosenberg. No true Aryan would
• e accepted a theology which included angels, devils, demons
J evil spirits. Rosenberg noted the absence of such ideas in
i Fourth Gospel (attributed to St. John), assuming that such
eas were omitted precisely because they were offensive to the
‘i flickering remnant of Nordic-Hellene culture to whom this
rspel was addressed. German, and most other, scholarship of
'is period denied that the Fourth gospel was written by a Jew.
was the proper and true message of an Aryan Jesus. With the
-perstition that marked Hither-Asiatic and Roman-Etruscan
■eologies removed, Aryan Christianity would deny
termediate, especially evil, beings that somehow stood in the
ay of man’s flight upward, on Eckhart’s fifth level of the soul,
unite with the Godhead.
Rosenberg rejected the idea of creation ex nihilo. He
Jd that doctrine was the "Canaan Monstrosity." The Nordic
'ew of God, man and all reality posits an eternal world, ithat is,
*.e continual existence of all that is. There was no creation of
jmething out of nothing. Man can approach God as an equal
'ecause each is equally uncreated and each existed from all
. :ernity. Both are equally uncreated and equally spiritual. God’s
:ristence is greater as God, but God is no more spirit than man
< Instead of having to approach God as unequal, as creature
□ Creator, man can fly toward the deity and approach him as
n equal.
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche

Friedich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) offered a new

ind quite original perspective on the nature of reality. His ideas
found an audience in some highly unlikely places. These ideas
were used in ways that Nietzsche would not have approved.
Alfred Rosenberg envisioned a new philosophy, and he chose
Nietzsche’s philosophy as a convenient and popular vehicle
w herewith to express his vision. One chapter of The Myth of the
Twentieth Century is entitled, "Nietzsche the Prophet." As the
second world war ended, Rosenberg commemorated the one
hundredth anniversary of Nietzsche’s birth in a speech, later
published in essay form. That essay was Rosenberg’s last
publication under the Third Reich. Rosenberg used and
modified Nietzsche at will. Rosenberg did not attempt to
present "true" Nietzsche, for that was not his purpose.
Rosenberg intended only to add legitimacy to his ideas by
following Nietzsche. It is difficult to think of Rosenberg’s
philosophy if one does not think first of Nietzsche. Rosenberg
fabricated portions of his thought out of Nietzsche’s ideas, but
he presented them in his own way and for his own purposes.
Nietzsche was, first and foremost, a classicist. His study,
his books and his professorship all related to classical, primarily
Greek, literature arid the arts. Rosenberg had begun his studies,
especially in the Myth of the Twentieth Century, with the Greeks.
Rosenberg considered the early Greeks to have been Nordic
types who possessed most of the desirable Aryan racial
characteristics. Nietzsche’s perception of the Greeks doubtless
colored Rosenberg’s presentation of them in the Myth.
The philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
influenced Nietzsche to a considerable degree. Schopenhauer
had dabbled in Eastern philosophies, and concluded with them,
and against mainstream Western thought, that existence was
evil. We are hard pressed to find another major Western
thinker who begins with the thought, "to be is evil." The world
162 Alfred Rosenberg

was a place of grave trials and tribulations. Individual existence

apart from the whole ("all Soul") was evil. Man was impelled to
reproduce his species endlessly by a drive known as the will to
live. The only escape, the only fitting end for man, could be
found in rejecting the will to live and cease reproducing. Life
would thus come to a halt and the irrational Fate that controls
us all would be vanquished. Schopenhauer’s recourse was
found in "will-less contemplation", a rejection of that great and
strong force that constantly has us at its mercy. His World as
Will and Idea was never especially popular in its own time, but
it influenced a number of philosophers in later ages.
In an essay written in 1874, Schopenhauer as Educator,
Nietzsche had noted the significance of the author of the World
as Will and Idea on his thought. He decided to become himself
Schopenhauer’s man who "destroys his worldly happiness
through his personal courage." This being is a kind of superman
who can conquer fate and escape from the wretched confines
of an eternal world not of his liking. Here Nietzsche posited the
affirmation of self which is at times cruel even to those whom
we love. One’s true self resides not within but high above one’s
being. One must reject the confining-conformity which church
and state use to intimidate us. He chided Schopenhauer for
escaping into Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of will-less
contemplation and into denial of all existence of self as an
entity separate from the All-Soul. Rosenberg especially liked
this critique because it was based in large part on Germanic
nationalism and racial pride.
Schopenhauer’s will to live is an irrational factor and, as
such, is beyond human control. One can only defeat that basic
force by negating one’s self. Thus, the irrational will and man
are destroyed simultaneously. Nietzsche’s will to power is only
partially impersonal and irrational. While assuming that all
beings seek power, he does assume that some are able to
control that quest. If one assumes that Socrates is more
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 163
powerful, by conscious will act, than Plato, the truly superior
teing is free to will those attributes that will make him more
tike Socrates and less like Plato. Schopenhauer’s will is always
blind, and the only free will act comes in denying that blind
impulse. Nietzsche allows man to master self and thus shape his
*ill to fulfill self.
Nietzsche distinguished between the mentalities of a
master and a slave. The master is not impelled to do anything
whereas the slave is. The slave can create imaginary revenge
igainst injustices done to him, and thus he is involved in
sublimation of appetites. The master can take real and direct
action when he deems it necessary, and thus has no need for or
reason to sublimate. The slave is full of resentment and is
compelled to hate his enemies whereas the master knows no
resentment and can act benignly toward his enemies, even to
the point of loving them. Man’s ability to shape his destiny, thus
knowing self and willing perfection through power, is a function
of the proportion of master and slave morality within his soul.
The slave is condemned to act as he does, and therefore cannot
know himself or choose to become free. The master is free to
will without regard to state in life.
The personality that is irrational, impelled to action only
by appetites, not the directed will, are Dionysian. Those that
possess a reasoned, directed, forceful will are Apollonian. The
Apollonian spirit in early Nietzsche covers the reasoned actions
in the arts, with especially significant reference to the Greeks.
This school is the refined will of mankind and is restrained,
harmonious, and measured. The Dionysian school emerged
from a drunken frenzy of mythical cults and suggests a cruel
impulse of the base appetites to exceed all human norms of
behavior. Nietzsche did not condemn the Dionysian cult
because the Apollonian spirit was born out of it. In later works
Nietzsche took the term Dionysian to mean a special synthesis
of the two schools and juxtaposed it to the Jesus of the
164 Alfred Rosenberg

Christian religion, the sad figure of the crucified Christ. A

sample of the synthesis can be seen in Birth of Tragedy (1872)
where he spoke of the "sublime as the artistic conquest of the
grotesque."
Since the Apollonian culture grew out of the initial,
halting steps of the original Dionysian to create cosmos (order)
from chaos (disorder), the synthesis is reasonable. What is
unreasonable is Nietzsche’s suggestion that man changed from
his early acceptance of Apollonian culture to the disordered
culture of the savage and barbarian Dionysian in the first and
original sense of Dionysian cults. Man chose only the synthesis
Dionysian culture, primarily because it represented a spark of
fire within the believer that counterbalanced overwhelming
order that has become conformity.
The Dionysian-Apollonian synthesis is quite hegelian,
except that in Nietzsche’s synthesis the conflicting elements are
preserved so that one can pick out, even after joining, the
distinguishing feature of each. The Greeks had exhibited more
slave than master mentality in the Dionysian cult, and more
master than slave mentality in the Apollonian. The Greek in
the first instance sought to preserve self through self-indulgence
and in the second instance through willed fulfillment of
character. This suggests a human nature that is quite fluid, in
the state of flux, and working out its identity according to its
potential.
Rosenberg makes a distinction between Apollonian and
Dionysian approaches to life among the Greeks. He was
influenced to a considerable extent by Nietzsche’s perspectives
on this subject. Over fifty pages of the Myth are devoted to this
topic.
It was in the basic conception of humankind that
Nietzsche influenced Rosenberg the most. Nietzsche saw that
man was in the process of becoming, unless he should choose,
at some point, to override this tendency toward development.
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 165
Nature in and of itself was limited in its number of expressions.
It had a certain number of types or patterns of existence and no
more. These it repeated endlessly, without change or variance.
With the superman Nietzsche was able to introduce the
possibility of secular salvation. The superman would create a
whole - new pattern of existence which he alone uniquely
created. Thus, man’s salvation would come in the fact that even
Nature could not alter this new pattern which the superman had
created.
Whereas Nietzsche was concerned only for the fate of
the individual human being, Rosenberg identified the duty of
the superman as the salvation of his race. Rosenberg’s
Superman would liberate his fellow Aryans who had lost the
Nordic Truth and were thus suppressed, subjugated and
downtrodden. The new Superman would necessarily be racially
conscious. He would give birth to the New German, a man
rooted deeply in the Mother Earth for his personality. The
superman would help to rediscover the lost myth of the
Germanic peoples. He would awaken the racial soul which
would become the supreme value of the people. Thus, the
whole race would become supermen.
A new morality was needed to aid the superman in
attaining his destiny. Nietzsche transvaluated values. He
rejected traditional Judaeo-Christian morality as a mpral code
fitted only for weaklings and slaves. Such a moral system
prevented the strong man from obtaining the tools wherewith
to attain the secular immortality Nietzsche promised. Christian
morality, as taught by the traditional church fathers, sickened
the strong animal, teaching humility and meekness. The new
morality Nietzsche offered was the dialectical opposite of
Judaeo-Christian morality. It taught that the overman must
assert himself, be strong, clever, and proud. The transvaluated
values included all those things that are primitive in man and
166 Alfred Rosenberg

which weak civilization has rejected. Man, naturally, is self*

assertive and proud, not humble and withdrawn.
Rosenberg’s redrawn Christian Church would accept the
values taught by Nietzsche. All Nietzsche had said of the
superman was true of the German soul. It was proud, marked
by honor, and unbending. It did not accept the slave mentality.
Nietzsche would hardly have agreed with Rosenberg on the
conclusions which the latter drew. Nietzsche was an atheist
Rosenberg made Nietzsche’s values the basis of revamped
religion.
Nietzsche’s new man has type-forming effect. The pattern
he creates not only repeats infinitely into the future, but it
suggests to other superior men that they might be type-forming
persons as well. As type-formers they suggest the possibility of
a world other than that which exists.
Let us turn a moment to the story of Zarathustra, a
legendary figure chosen by Nietzsche merely as a symbol of the
creator of the myth of God. Having first created the deity
Zarathustra withdraws to a mountain top to contemplate what
he has done. He returns to announce the death of God. For a
brief time some Twentieth Century theologians attempted to
create a religion in the post-Death of God era, but Nietzsche’s
parable has precious little to do with that. While he has
Zarathustra speak of the literal death of God ("Can’t you smell
Him decaying?”) he means only to kill the idea of a God which
requires sub-human, gentle virtues of man in place of the self-
assertive values which Nordic man requires. Zarathustra then
travels about the countryside bringing his new message that
God is dead. He announces the new transvaluated values. He
asks humans now to realize that, while once the great sin was
blasphemy against one’s God, now the mortal sin is the
rejection of man’s nature, his race, his true essence, or, as
Nietzsche says, "the earth."
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 167
In choosing his new values the superman, or, more
xccurately, the potential Superman, must will himself to power.
Society and the state become merely a scaffolding or
superstructure used by the new figure to attain his destiny. War
is among the many useful instruments the potential overman
can use. War is not judged on its intrinsic merits or justice. It
ts judged on its success. A good cause does not render a war
just; rather, a good war grants justice to its cause. No obstacle
or impediment may stand in the way of the overman. He must
remove whatever obstacles there are and by any and all means
available.
The superman must be prepared to understand history,
its movements and its forces. In Of the Use and Disadvantage
of History for Life (1874) Nietzsche wrote of three kinds or
schools of history. The chronology of events that school children
learn he called "antiquarian history." When we pass judgment
on these events we move into "critical history." The school of
history that studies the influence of the great men of all times,
perhaps one day the superman, he called "monumental history."
Nietzsche interpreted the most important phase of historical
studies as that which revolved around the will-acts of human
beings. This had its application in urging the comfortable, but
potentially great, men to abandon the mediocrity of
contemporary life and seek a secular salvation in great deeds
and accomplishments.
Nietzsche criticized German society for not being able to
sort out truce genius and for consequently idolizing all powers
and leaders that existed. History points only a direction for men
to take; it does not dwell on hero-worship of past or present
leaders. All men and all civilizations seek great men who have
a super-historical sense about them. Such persons would not
find salvation in a single deed of any man, themselves included,
but would seek salvation in an ever-present burst of genius that
168 Alfred Rosenberg

treated time as immaterial to the causes. Each and every act is

the one that recreated the world.
Nietzsche idolized Richard Wagner, calling him the
greatest composer and poet the modern world has known. He
was prepared to acknowledge Wagner as a true superman until,
suddenly, he broke with him. Wagner had made his heroes seek
and find redemption in and through heroic acts. Bravery was
the overriding virtue. Then Wagner wrote Parsifal. In that opera
Wagner has the hero reject Greek life in favor of the Christian
culture. Instead of conquering Fate or laughing at it ("yea the
morrow") and acting honorably, Parsifal succumbs to it by
kneeling to the crucified Christ and his vicar on earth, the Pope.
At first indirectly in Human, All too Human and then directly
in The Case of Wagner, Nietzsche posited his own being and
creativity by denying that which made him "comfortable" and
happy, his friendship with Wagner. He was prepared to take the
step toward secular immorality (becoming an overman) by
acting singularly as creator.
The overman must be prepared to "live dangerously." If
one denies his own creativity, one cannot "give style to one’s
character" and that would be the ultimate prostitution of one’s
self. It would be suicide and there is nothing suicidal about
Nietzsche. In that he differed significantly from Schopenhauer
whose philosophy is centered on racial suicide as the only
means of conquering evil existence and the irrational will to live
and thus escaping this world.
In The Dawn (1881) and The Joyful Wisdom (1882)
Nietzsche returned to the idea of raw power as the motivating
factor in all beings. He believed that man was impelled to strive
to overcome and surpass his neighbor,if only in his own mind.
The "complete list of the history of culture" is nothing more
than "a long line of degrees of this secretly desired
overwhelming" of all his potential competitors. He drew up a
plan, fixed as a ladder, showing the will to power. At the top
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 169

were the ascetic and the martyrs. Others who had sought type-
forming powers followed in a precise order. The martyrs set
aside all other strivings and appetites and attempted to imitate
Christ whom they had chosen as their model. They attempted
lo imitate his power to the point o( excluding all other desires
and appetites. Some may even have surpassed Christ in
personal sacrifice, and thus have become type-forming
personalities.
By and large Nietzsche’s Dionysian personality is a
controlled will to power. He sought conquest in the arts,
sciences, humanities, and, above all, philosophy. He specifically
did not look to the control of others as type-forming or
profitable for the development of the personality. His creative
genius "suffers life" but masters self. In his paradigm of great
men Nietzsche notes that all had mastered self in a way men
rarely do, and that is what made them great. Among the great
men he named Julius Caesar, Plato, Socrates, Wagner and
Goethe. Caesar, for example, is more admired for his mastery
of self, control over his own destiny and his creativity than for
his soldiering and military skills.
Early in his intellectual development Nietzsche had
become interested in the hegelian materialism of the leftist
Young Hegelian movement generally, and David Friedreich
Strauss (1808-1874) particularly. Their attack on conventional
morality and Christian ethics was of great interest to him
because he had already decided to transcend Christian morality
and transvaluate its ethic. Strauss published his Das Leben Jesu
kritisch bearbeitet (Life of Jesus Critically Examined), in 1835-36
in two volumes. He concluded that the four Gospels were
recollection of the memory of exceptionally great personalities.
They were not the work of divine inspiration. What they did
offer was an unusually good insight into the life of the Jewish
people of the Hellenistic period and their climate of opinion
that was full of messianic expectations. They summarized and
170 Alfred Rosenberg

synthesized notions peculiar to the Hebrews regarding world

history, creation, the nature of God and the like. That age, like
all other times, was a mere step in the path of final and
complete pantheism. The Gospels did not prove that any divine
intervention in the affairs of the world had ever taken place.
They did show a certain consciousness in the general, mystical
sphere of religious experience.
What Strauss, and, to a degree, the other Young
Hegelians, had retained from the Gospels was a strong sense of
morality apd ethical obligation. Unconsciously, the authors of
the four Gospels had given us poetic renderings of a man’s
desire to transcend the finitude of the particular moment in
history cast in an ethical mold. While they had reduced the
Gospels to the level of pagan legends, the Young Hegelians
had, at least in their own view, salvaged something of their
content as a reasonable, if uninspired, basis for morality. The
aesthetic accounts of the good life in the Gospels had been
surpassed by the freedom that modern science and technology
had produced, referring especially to the liberal state. However,
liberalism had not yet brought, and was unlikely ever to bring,
a new and superior morality by which men could live.
Nietzsche reacted with scorn. Strauss had acted in bad
faith, for his intellectual radicalism had propelled him away
from Christianity. Modern conventions of society and his guilt
feelings forced him to return to conventional, Christian
morality. Strauss had not recognized, said Nietzsche, that when
one renounces supernatural religion and enshrines technology
in its place one can no longer attribute to man a unique
supernatural nature or morality. Man cannot maintain his
dignity as the "high ally" of God.
Nietzsche had some considerable admiration for the Old
Testament and its type-forming power. It had created a certain
type of ascetic, albeit obedient, even subservient, personality. It
had a powerful influence on the prophets. Besides, Nietzsche
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 171
iked much of its beauty of expression. He did not like Strauss’
The Old Faith and the New (1872) and its inordinate emphasis
on the morality of Judaism and its type-forming effect on
Christianity.
Nietzsche called Strauss a Kidturphilister (cultural
philistine) and attacked the heady way Strauss handled his
literacy success. Strauss’ Life of Jesus was among the most
successful theological works of the nineteenth century. His Old
Religion and the New was nearly as successful. Nietzsche thought
of Strauss as one who enjoyed his fame and the admiration he
received from radical elements, but who was unwilling to
’suffer" and truly put into practice what his tracts taught. The
very success of the works made him wealthy and "comfortable."
The only apparent reason Strauss had not abandoned
Christianity was that he was entrapped by the idea of some
morality and had absolutely nothing to offer that was equal to
or better than the Christian ethic.
Nietzsche was prepared to make that quantum leap in
thought. He was in the midst of developing an ethical system
suited to the master morality. He was prepared to suffer any
consequence of abandoning Christianity completely, for it was
only in such a complete desertion that the cult of the superman
could be developed and sustained. Although filled with the idea
of love, Christianity had sustained the slave morality and thus
had retained the factor of resentment that marks the slave and
separates him from the master. The necessarily inferior position
of all men is central to Christianity because it was based on
Jewish morality. The Epistles and the Gospels had retained the
worst of Hebrew literature and ethics, forcing proud master
personalities to grovel before a God to whom they were
infinitely inferior.
Nietzsche was horrified to hear that there were some
who thought that his highly individualistic philosophy might, one
day, become the basis for a political ideology. When his friend
172 Alfred Rosenberg

Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897) wrote him that his theory of the

superman might be used for partisan political purposes
Nietzsche dismissed the idea as idiotic. Nietzsche held no
nationalistic views. He was concerned that others might, in the
name of nationalism, subdue the German creative spirit in favor
of the German state. His concern was for freedom of inquiry
and creativity not the national spirit per se. He had held
patriotic views in his youth but these had long since passed.
Occasionally, one finds nationalistic statements, or, at least
maxims among his later collections of thoughts that are
suggestive of nationalistic sentiments. His brother-in-law
Bernhard Forster was quite nationalistic and anti-semitic and
some of his ideas occasionally appeared in Nietzsche’s
correspondence. The Antichrist, not published until 1895 (after
his commitment to an asylum), is strongly anti-semitic. It
identified the Jew as the Antichrist.
Burckhardt’s warning was a harbinger of things to come.
Rosenberg had no use for abstract ideas unless they contributed
in some measure to his political and social philosophy.
Nietzsche’s philosophy was indeed made for political
interpretation. His attacks on Christianity and Christian ethics
and character fitted Rosenberg’s ideas well. He, too, saw
Christian ethics as suited to a lesser group, but one that was
racially composed. He, too, saw that Christian ethics forced
prostrate, inferior man to crawl to a creator who was infinitely
above him. Such a theology was well fitted for the Jews, but not
Nordic peoples.
Rosenberg also readily agreed that Christianity became
the dumping ground for obsolete, archaic, and abusive Jewish
ideas. As Nietzsche’s described it, the worst of Judaism had
been incorporated into Christianity. Jesus had ideas that were
never understood properly. Therefore his ideas bad been
corrupted immediately after his death. Nietzsche was right in
observing that the last Christian had been crucified at Calvary.
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 173

Both could agree that Jesus had offered a dominant, type­

forming personality that had been misread and rejected. The
values Jesus had actually taught were not prepared for slave
mentalities, but had been prepared for masterful personalities.
Nietzsche thought about reconstructing Christianity and be
chose Zarathustra to deliver his messages. Rosenberg accepted
Nietzsche’s conclusion that one cannot have a metaphysical man
if one denies the possibility of that branch of philosophical
inquiry, and that one cannot have supernatural man or morality
if he denies God. Rosenberg wanted a supernatural system so
he chose to resurrect Christ.
But Rosenberg wanted more. He wanted a secular power
of the type-forming personality. He wanted the superman
doctrine. He cherished the idea of having a philosophy based in
the will to power. The entire German people might become
overmen while the lesser races remained captives of the slave
morality of the Old Testament in one or another version. To
achieve the superman several things were necessary.
First, the nation’s will would have to be forged into a
single entity that would become hard as steel. If that will
became sufficiently strong nothing could prevail against it. The
entire nation would suffer life collectively. The German people
would appear as one in a whole new world history. Together,
they would shape the will to power.
Second, the forging of the will would be carried out not
through a single act of multitude, but through the single act of
a national super-leader. The people would provide the proper
material for such a transformation, but the real work itself
would be the product of the great leader. Such a person is best
recognized as a type-forming personality in Rosenberg’s
writings. His effect is not so much on his own individual being
and personality as on the entire nation. In a sense, such a type-
former would be an overman from Nietzsche, but it is most
important to see him as a great deal more. He would be a
 Alfred Rosenberg

gateway through which the whole nation may pass. The nation
would move from mere chronology to true racial history. The
great man would be the catalyst that causes the various
disparate personalities and ideologies of the nation to come
together, united with a single determination to do the work of
a single will.
Third, the national will would be stated as a political
program. It could be reduced to an ideology, but one which has
not a single corresponding form since the Apollonian Greek
world of polis. Everything would be contained within the idea;
nothing would be permitted that mitigated against it and
nothing would escape its all-encompassing coverage. The
ideology would articulate a rationale for the existence of all
things. Any idea would have to be judged against its standards.
One could think of an ideological poem, work of art, symphony
or sport. The program would gain the support of all people in
a mystical (or mythical) way, one that would defy rational
explanation, precisely because it would come, not from intellect,
but from the iron will of the nation as seen through and
interpreted by the supreme leader. It would not rationalize its
effect; it would overcome and envelop.
Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century does not
name a savior, the prophet of the ideology, but it strongly
suggests that Germany was then awaiting such a figure. It looks
longingly toward the time of his coming, and that time many of
Rosenberg’s writings (especially the earlier ones) suggest is at
hand. The new leader is to conquer mystically, magnetically,
hypnotically, mythically or he will be "the anti-Christ", that is,
the wrong person.
History to Rosenberg has always been dominated by the
great type-formers. This is equally true for the history of all
nations. From the perspective of each race the type-former has
been value-positive, that it, he has made his race what it is.
Perhaps one can view this as saying that the type-forming
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 175

individual has given history or at least the chronology of his

people its character. Perhaps we might say that the type­
forming individual gave the history of his race its essence. Such
type-formers rarely bode good for other races unless races live
in seclusion, isolating themselves from one another. But the
type-forming image of one race will almost inevitably conflict
with the essence of another race should the races become
mixed within a state.
That which Rosenberg perceives as the type-forming Jew,
that stereotyped money changer in the Temple, that merchant
who practices thievery as commerce and that money-lender who
practices usury, this type-set racial Jew may exist in isolation
from the Nordic man, but he cannot coexist in Germany with
him. This was the theme of Rosenberg’s essay, "The Earth
Centered Jew has no Soul." This Jew’s interests are antithetical
to the honorable German. His state is not the German state;
and the Nordic-German could not exist in a Jewish state.
Separation of the races is the only alternative that is possible
for the peace and security of each race.
Because the type-former involves all things, directs all
activity, dominates all human states of existence, all that those
whom he touched have created bear the indelible sign of that
type-former. The type-forming Jew set the necessary pattern for
any Jewish state just as the Nordic-German type-former set the
stage for his racial state. The same is true for commerce,
religion, art, drama, music and for all other things men do.
From the type-former one draws a certain physical
pattern as well as mental-psychological pattern. The ideology
and the type-former create such a pattern that physical
differences necessarily follow; perhaps it is that a physical type
attracted a certain mental-psychological type. There are physical
differences among the races and because the ideology fits only
one race it necessarily sets patterns of physical perfection. The
racial type-former assumes that those who are like themselves
176 Alfred Rosenberg

ideologically and physiologically are also members of his own

race. If one believes in a religion, an ideology or in any other
thing, one should look like the other believers.
The German pattern of beauty of physical form is
substantially, essentially, quite different from the Hither-Asiatic
and Jewish ideals of beauty. The Apollonian ideals of beaut)’
are quite different from those of Nordic-Aryan. The Chinese
standards differ from Occidental generally.
Nietzsche and Rosenberg enjoyed yet another common
ground. Both saw history as dominantly the chronology of
heroes and battles. Richard Wagner’s tales of an heroic struggle
.of the honorable Nordics against a wide variety of dishonorable
types influenced both Nietzsche and Rosenberg.
Rosenberg clearly derived the idea of an heroic struggle
of a type-former against Fate from Nietzsche. Nietzsche,
commenting on Wagner’s early, great opera, The Flying
Dutchman, noted that it was in the Dutchman’s struggle against
Fate that heroism was bom. After the redemption of the
Dutchman and his crew by Senta’s act of selfless love Wagner
ended the story for there was no longer any heroic element.
The audience quickly loses interest after the heroic event has
taken place. In studying history generally we are interested only
in the type-forming events of the nation. Mundane and common
events draw no attention. What draws our interest are the great
acts, such as heroic defense of the fatherland and heroism on
the battlefield of honor. These are added to the rich trove of
folk lore. Occasionally, we hear of acts of cowardice and
dishonor on the field of conflict. Nations then carry these
cowardly events with great shame as something they must
avenge and erase through heroic acts. Cowardly acts are a
source of national mourning and unquietness as well they
should be.
The essence of Nordic life is found in its search for
honor and heroism. Honor is the primary Nordic value and it
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 177
requires of Nordic types that they perform acts of bravery.
Nothing else can take their place as the supreme values of the
race. Only events wherein acts of heroism can be demonstrated
are of value in proving the worth of a man or a race. While
Rosenberg has great respect for the farmer and his way of life,
holding him to be the true producer of wealth, there is nothing
heroic in working the farm. But the farm does produce sturdy
soldiers and strong militia. The heroic fanner must find heroism
elsewhere on the field of honor. It is the duty of the state and
its leaders to provide the arena wherein acts of heroism can
occur and wherein honorable men can demonstrate their
allegiance to the honor code. The state at war provides the
opportunity for the honorable men to act heroically and
honorably. Nordic men may regard a state of war as natural. It
would be insufficient to prove heroism or honor in a less than
concrete situation or in a test or theoretical case. Men must
seek out, in each generation, a war wherein they may act in a
manly, honorable and heroic fashion. Such may not be the case
for men in their civilizations, inhabitants of other lands or
members of races with different supreme values. These are the
requirements for the heroic race as posited by Nietzsche and by
Rosenberg. Other races value honor and heroism very little.
Power is at the bottom of every governmental system.
Government is simply organized and concentrated power. No
other organization, excepting the Catholic Church of Middle
Ages, enjoys such concentrated power. Nietzsche had assumed
the superman was interested in power and its exercise. His will
was precisely the will to power. The emphasis that Rosenberg
gave to Nietzsche’s will to power gave a rationale to the
National Socialist party to control the state mechanism. It had
to concentrate in its hands enough power to achieve its aims.
This Nietzsche had suggested. Rosenberg had no reason to
disagree. Nietzsche had given his sufficient power to his
struggling superman so that he might achieve his destiny and^
178 Alfred Rosenberg

reject the mundane, restricting parameters of society.

Rosenberg gave the power to a leader whose will would shape,
mold, lead and control the nation’s destiny, thus saving not one,
but all, Germans.
Nietzsche would have given his superman the power to
shape morality as he saw fit. His transvaluated value system was
a prerequisite to the philosophy of the superman. This man
could not be constrained by the morality that governed mortal
men. He needed a new standard fitted to his new goals and
objectives. This was Rosenberg’s plan for the nation that sought
to rebuild its people and reshape history. Its state must have the
power to transvaluate the whole morality of the people. The
New Gennany of the Third Reich could not operate under the
corrupted Christian morality, nor could it turn to the alien
morality of Roman-Etruscan-Hither Asiatic peoples. It would
have to reconstruct morality so that it fitted the German nation
properly as the carrier of the Nordic ideal. This meant, in part,
looking inwardly, seeking out the racial soul and the consequent
morality of its history. It also meant that the leader who was the
type-forming patriarch of the new nation would form such an
ethic out of the power of his will. This would be his prerogative
as the type-forming agent of his people. As sovereign the_type-
former could authoritatively allocate such a value system. As
law giver, as the will of the community, he could dictate what
was the product of the racial will and others would follow
because of his necessary authority.
The type-former did operate within certain constraints.
While he could form a certain national pattern he was,
necessarily, the voice of tradition and of the past. His message
was one more of renewal of what had-been lost than of a
revolutionary new future that wholly transcended the past. Jesus
Christ was the quintessence of a type-former for he came, as he
states clearly in the Gospels, not to alter, but to fulfill; not to
destroy but to make things right; not to overturn existing
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 179
patterns of thought, but to restore them to their proper postures
io society. This is precisely what Nietzsche expected of the type-
Sormer. His pattern of existence would be different yet it would
rail be based in the essentials of his past. We cannot look at
Nietzsche as if he were merely a revolutionary whose actions
would be directed at destroying what existed. He did not wish
to lead his nation toward nihilism.
Rosenberg’s type-former would be grounded in the
German national mind and the Nordic racial traditions. He
■’•ouId restore the Nordic man to his rightful way of thinking.
He would expunge the Jewish-Hither Asiatic elements of the
German state. These elements had corrupted the German
cation by importing alien ideas and thoughts. The type-forming
man must distinguish between what the state must maintain and
what it must remove from its philosophy and theology. That
mission alone is of great importance. But the type-forming hero
a a creator as well as a reactionary reformer. In the process of
weeding out the past and restoring Nordic ideals he necessarily
brings several divergent streams to a confluence. He is to join
these many rivers to form a new Nordic lake. He brings the
thoughts, traditions and racial essence of untold generations
into a new synthesis. A true type-former merges the best of all
previous worlds to create the new cosmos. Much of the past had
been in a chaotic, pre-existing but unordered universe. When
such a world comes under the direction of the type-former it
becomes wholly ordered cosmos. The past merges with the new
present.
The past never wholly disappear. Even if we were to
want that it should be so we cannot avoid the past or make it
disappear. The past in omnipresent. We may fail to recognize
it. We may attempt to sublimate our racial thoughts and
stirrings within our souls. Enemies and aliens may have
attempted to obscure the past, but it never is destroyed. The
reason for its survival is that the racial memories are within us,
180 Alfred Rosenberg

bred over many generations past and fed into us just like the
blonde color of hair or the blue of our eyes. If enough
miscegenation occurs our biological and psychological-
ideological traits may be destroyed through a natural process of
attrition. But so long as the racial Nordic characteristics remain
within us as the strong dominant element the true German
cannot deny his heritage. Against this background the Nordic
type-former finds a ready audience. Neither he nor his audience
could explain why alien ideals are repugnant or why the native
ideals are attractive, but each of the type-formers finds that
fertility of the ground has been predetermined ages ago. A race
is what it is. It has a racial destiny which it seeks to fulfill.
Recurrent type-formers, appearing throughout the ages of the
race have sustained and revitalized this heritage. Their secular
salvation is guaranteed when the type-formers have cast the
race in a certain mold. They can add to, but not work against,
the essence of the race to whom their messages are directed.
The true national awakening is the highest intellectual
achievement of a the hero. It is the greatest service he can
perform for his race. Ordinarily, acts of honor and heroism on
the battlefield are man’s highest acts. These acts must take a
distant second position to the service the type-forming hero
performs. The hero becomes the special missionary of the race.
The type-former constantly reminds members of his race that,
in the Nordic peoples, heroism and honor are supreme values.
These values have become the highest values of the race
because the type-former practices and encourages the
acceptance of these virtues. Members of his race accept them
because the hero accepts them.
Rosenberg’s philosophy is incomplete without the
concept of the superman who is the type-former of his race.
Rosenberg’s theology awaited the type-former. That hero would
purge the idea of creation ex nihilo from Christianity and
replace it with the reconstruction of Eckhart’s five levels of the
 Rosenberg and Nietzsche 181
soul, the fifth of which clearly taught that there was an immoral,
siemal "spark of the soul" which flies to the Godhead as equal
to equal in terms of being uncreated existence. That idea would
fpring from the depths of the soul of the entire Nordic race, but
it would require proper statement and perspective and this
Aould be the work of the type-forming personality. Rosenberg’s
concept of the type-forming personality does not create a new
pattern of existence ex nihilo as it does for Nietzsche.
The type forming personalities in the philosophies of
Rosenberg and Nietzsche are identical. Both are types of beings
which establish a new pattern of existence. In this way the type-
former gains secular immortality. Each and every type-former
would be permitted to use society in any way he deemed
necessary. Each would transvaluate values in such a way as to
deny the traditional Jewish-Christian values based on love.
The whole Christian idea of love is unworthy of
consideration in both type-forming Supermen. Germany of the
Weimar has strayed away from the assertive values of the race
and accepted an artificial value system that mandates love of
inferior. This is the legacy of the "Canaan Monstrosity.'' It is
the logical result of the acceptance of the idea of creation ex
nihilo. Until these ideas are purged from the German state evil
and corruption will remain. The value system is the
consequence of the alien, Hither-Asiatic idea of creation.
Neither Nietzsche nor Rosenberg could accept the idea of
creation ex nihilo. Nietzsche’s classical rejection is based on the
acceptance of the myth of the eternal return. He led the way,
showing Rosenberg that pride in race. Nietzsche taught
Rosenberg that the myth of the type-forming superman was
incompatible with the Jewish idea of creation ex nihilo.
Rosenberg denied Nietzsche’s eternal return myth, but accepted
his idea of attacking the Jewish-Christian idea of creation.
182 Alfred Rosenberg

Bibliography

Baumlcr, Alfred. Nietzsche, der Philosoph und Politiker. Leipzig, 1931.

______ . "Nietzsche und der Nationalsozialismus* Studien zur deutschen
Geistcsgeischichte. Berlin, 1937.
Brinton, C.C. "The National Socialists’ Use of Nietzsche,* Jouma! of (he
History of Ideas I (April 1940), pp. 131-50.
Charles, Pierre. Nietzsche. Harvard University, 1948.
Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Anti-ChrisL Princeton
University, 4th ed., 1974.
Knight, A.HJ. Some Aspects of (he Life and Work of Nietzsche* Cambridge
University, 1933.
 Scientific Racism

Racism assumes that there are groups of individuals who

share certain common physical characteristics — race — who are
generally superior to another such group. The Nineteenth
Century produced a whole new dimension to racism; it based its
assumptions on certain findings related to new and existing
scientific knowledge. The science of racism rejects simple
prejudice based in traditional hatreds. It concludes its prejudices
for and against according to scientific findings. It may then
come to the same conclusions that other, older racist doctrines
had earlier to come to, but the reasons are entirely different.
The founder of modern scientific racism was Arthur, the Count
de Gobineau, a French aristocrat who began his academic
career as a student of the Orient. His work was carried on by
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman who was the son-
in-law of the racist composer Richard Wagner.
A number of works have been published, beginning
during the Second World War, examining the influence of these
thinkers of Alfred Rosenberg, and on Adolph Hitler and other
national Socialist ideologues. Generally, these books concluded
that there was nothing new in Rosenberg’s Myth of the
Twentieth Century and that Hitler had drawn his ideas from
pamphlets common in the streets of Germany and Austria long
before anyone conceived of the NSDAP. [see, especially, P.G J.
Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and
Austria. New York: Doubleday, 1970].
If one could prove that National Socialism was the
product of the total German culture, from Martin Luther to
Frederick the Great to the present, then the entire German
society could be condemned. The Allied powers were free to
bomb and destroy people at all levels and strata and from all
classes in Germany in a total war. This made it easier to fight
the Germans generally. It also made it a great deal easier for
the Allied powers to assign guilt for war crimes to the entire
184 Alfred Rosenberg

population. It made it a simple task to ridicule the intelligent*,

of Nazi leaders and dismiss their ideology.

The Bayreuth Circle

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a member of

prominent British family whose love for things German brough
him not only to that land but into a place of considerabl;
prominence. He married Richard Wagner’s daughter and join
the Bayreuth Circle. That group, led by the master compose:
had a highly restricted membership of superior intellectua
ability. It consisted of Wagner and his wife, Cosima, the
daughter of Franz Liszt; the composer’s son Siegfried and hi*
English born wife Winifred; the poet and mass leader Dietrich
Eckhardt; Chamberlain and his wife; Alfred Rosenberg, and
after 1923, Adolf Hitler. After Wagner’s death in 1883 hh
widow assumed leadership of the group. They published the
Bayreuth Bulletin, a newsletter of restricted circulation that
discussed aspects of scientific racism and anti-semitism. The
Bayreuth circle was never close to the masses and made nc
attempt to mobilize them for practical political purposes. It was
a discussion group and think-tank, no more, but no less.
By the end of the First World War, Cosima Wagner and
her son Siegfried had died and leadership passed to Winifred
who became a very close friend of Adolph Hitler. At one time
it was rumored that she and Hitler might wed, but that neve!
came to pass. Hitler was introduced to the Bayreuth Circle by
Eckhardt and Rosenberg. Although the ideas of the Circle were
much the same as his own, it is doubtful whether the circle
really had much formative power over Hitler’s politics. The
same can be said of Rosenberg. His ideas were well-formed
before he joined the Bayreuth discussion group.. Since Hitler
was just becoming aware of the Circle at the time of the Beer
 Scientific Racism 185

.11 Putsch, what he learned from the Circle probably came

hrectly through Rosenberg during Hitler’s term in prison.
Hitler showed the Bayreuth Circle that there was a tie
tween their abstract ideas and real action. Rosenberg had
mght the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion from Russia with
n. He showed these documents to the Bayreuth Circle,
■ posing the members to them for the first time. Although the
jup had clearly held anti-semitic views prior to this time, Die
-otokollen gave these views a whole new perspective.
Richard Wagner expressed most of his ideas in his
xras. Early in his career Wagner composed The Flying
•jichman. This is a story of selfless and uninhibited love. The
.ptain of the ship, The Flying Dutchman, had cursed and thus
id damned himself and his crew. Fate allowed him to come
;hore once every one hundred years. Senta had previously
Jlen in love with a portrait of the Dutchman and renewed that
we when the real Dutchman made one of his appearances. She
_crificed herself and the ship, captain and crew were released
com their punishment.This is a simple and straightforward tale
f love and honor, the German racial values.
From the beginning of his career Wagner had thought of
'ringing Nordic folk tales to the operatic stage. He thought of
Tiling only on the hero Siegfried, but eventually expanded the
uory to encompass four operas. Collectively known as The Ring
f the Nibelungen, the set tells the story of heroism in an age
corrupted by money. The principal Nordic God, Wotan, known
jq earth as The Wanderer, wishes to have a great fortress built
in Valhalla. He employed the race of giants who lived in
Reisenheim and were led by Fafner and Fasolt. They demand
the gold of the Rhine maidens as their payment.
Wotan stole the gold belonging to the Rhine maidens
and tricked the dwarf Albrecht into surrendering the magic
iarnhelm and his magic ring. To complete payment to the giants
186 Alfred Rosenberg

Wotan had to give up all his ill-gotten treasure, including the

tarnhelm and the ring of the Nibelungen.
Wotan has fathered a superior race, the Walsungs. The
last two, brother and sister, are Siegmund and Sieglinde. They
do not know one another, having been separated in youth.
Sieglinde is married, but readily submits to Siegmund’s
advances. Her husband pursues Siegmund who is the superior
warrior. To punish Siegmund for violating the marriage vows
Wotan uses his spear to fragment Siegmund’s sword Nothing.
Siegmund dies, but his pregnant sister-lover is saved. Wotan’s
daughter Brunhilde saves her and for disobeying Wotan’s
command about allowing Siegmund to die, Brunhilde is made
into a mortal.
Sieglinde died in childbirth and her offspring Siegfried
was raised by a Nibelungen Mime, brother of Albrecht.
Siegfried and Mime hate one another, but Mime needed
Siegfried to kill the remaining giant Fafner. Fafner killed Fasolt
and then changed himself into a dragon in order to guard his
treasure. Siegfried grew to manhood and forged Nothing into a
great sword, something Mime has been unable to do.
Siegfried knew nothing of fear and Mime told him that
Fafner will teach him fear. Siegfried killed Fafner. After
inadvertently tasting the dead dragon’s blood he could
understand the song of a forest bird. She told him to kill Mime
for his own protection. She related also the story of a beautiful
maiden (Brunhilde) who lay on a rock surrounded by fire.
Siegfried found Brunhilde and aroused her from her sleep. They
pledged mutual and undying love. Siegfried left her to seek new
adventure.
On his Rhine journey Siegfried encountered his father’s
ancient enemy. He drank a magic potion and forgot Brunhilde.
The king enlisted Siegfried’s aid in bringing Brunhilde to court
to become the king’s bride. Siegfried fell in love with the king’s
sister. When he brought Brunhilde to court she could not
 Scientific Racism 187

understand why Siegfried could not recall her. Feeling betrayed,

she told the king to kill Siegfried. The greatest German hero
died and his bride rode her horse into the flames of her lover’s
funeral pyre. The fire spread to Valhalla and the old world was
consumed.
Siegfried was the archetype of the Nordic hero. He was
brave, honorable and adventuresome. He sought to recover his
racial history. He earned his redemption by performing acts of
heroism. He did not prostrate himself to any god. Indeed, he
defied The Wanderer (Wotan) during his quest for the girl on
the rock. He cared not for the future. He lived each day as
though it will be his last. He asked no forgiveness, and made no
apology, for what he is.
The evil dwarfs were symbolic of the Jews. They thought
only of money. They used their gold to control others. They
lived only to acquire more gold. They contributed nothing
positive or constructive. They were physically as well as
spiritually repulsive. They were constantly scheming. They
manipulated men of honor for their own devious purposes.
Every German schoolboy knew the great folk tale of the
Grail legend by heart. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival was
one of the greatest works of literature in the German (or any
other) language. On the surface it is a familiar tale of a pure
knight’s search for perfect love and redemption. It had been
popularized in the late Nineteenth Century in operatic form by
the composer Richard Wagner. Few pieces of heroic literature
had more impact on the nation-conscious Germans than
Parzival.
Wagner’s opera opens with the aged Knight, Gurnemanz,
recalling the legend of the Grail. Titurel had been fighting the
pagans without success when, suddenly, he was visited by a band
of angels. They gave unto his keeping the Holy Grail, from
which Christ drank at the Last Supper; and the Spear of
Longinius, the lance used by the Roman centurion to pierce the
188 Alfred Rosenberg

side of Jesus as he hung in agony upon the cross. Titurel had

built a great stronghold at Monsalvat to house these treasures,
and had gathered around him those knights who were pure in
heart wherewith to guard these great talismans of heavenly
power. These knights rode forth to fight injustice and tyranny
throughout the world.
Klingsor was an applicant, but he could not vanquish lust
and passion from his heart, and so was rejected for
membership. He then built a great garden of evil in which,
through enticements of the flesh provided by a variety of
beautiful women, he lured the pure ones from their stronghold,
and enslaved them in his evil service. Titurel sent forth
Amfortas to carry the sacred lance into the evil place and end
its temptations. Klingsor sent the lovely Kundry to tempi
Amfortas. She seduced him and delivered the sacred spear to
Klingsor. The evil sorcerer wounded Amfortas with it, and
although Amfortas escaped his wound would not heal. Amfortas
believed that he was condemned for his sin of the flesh.
An Innocent Fool, Parsifal, appeared on the scene,
seeking his identity and destiny. After a brief scene in which the
Holy Grail is unveiled, he went to Klingsor’s castle. Kundry was
sent to seduce him, but, suddenly, Parsifal had a vision and was
transfixed. He was told that should he fall to Kundry’s seduction
there could be no healing of Amfortas’ wound and no salvation
for him or the Grail Knights. He gained the grace necessary to
reject Kundry. Klingsor attempted to kill him with the spear,
but it hovered over the youth’s head. The sensual paradise
collapsed and Klingsor vanished.
After many years Parsifal returned from his wanderings
throughout the world. He found that Kundry had taken the
robes of a penitent and that Gurnemanz had become a hermit.
It was a Good Friday. He was told that Titurel had died and
that Amfortas still lay wounded and unable to consecrate Holy
Communion. Parsifal went to Monsalvat, touched Amfortas1
 Scientific Racism 189

•ound with the sacred spear and revived the knight. The spear
Jid the Grail were placed in the sanctuary.
The Grail legend is interpreted in two ways. Generally,
is viewed as a story of Christian love and the redemption of
mankind. The second is the mythical interpretation. The Grail
> said to contain a coded message known only to a few, and
□derstood by a tiny number. It is this interpretation which is
.ccepted by Ravenscroft in The Cup of Destiny (1981) and
-Vngebert in The Occult and the Third Reich (1974).
Lucifer was a Prince of Heaven before the sin of pride
prompted God to cast him to HelL On the descent to the
Underworld his crown fell to earth, and from it fell a huge
emerald. This was used by men of antiquity to fashion a
kinking cup to be used in occult rituals. Here we find the most
ancient relic accepted by both Christians and gnostics. The cup
*as ringed with unusual special signs, symbols, runes and the
ike, all depicting the ascent of man through various stages to
a final state of blessedness. The Grail had become the sacred
vessel of Initiate Knowledge. It contained on its exterior the
<reat trove of primordial knowledge and tradition which linked
the past to the future. That primordial knowledge can bring
an back into the natural and only true condition for him, the
primordial state of consciousness.
Nietzsche broke with Wagner over his operas Parsifal
and Lohengrin because in these musical dramas Wagner broke
urith his previous statements on Fate and redemption. Wagner
no longer sought salvation through the practice of the
traditional Nordic virtues of courage and honor. He had
submitted to Christianity, and to the Roman Catholic version of
Christianity. Rosenberg, who was born after Wagner had
composed all his operas, was less outraged than Nietzsche, but
stiU preferred the Ring of the Nibelungen to Wagner’s later
works.
190 Alfred Rosenberg

The influence of the Bayreuth Circle on the developmeix

of National Socialism is overstated in several of the studies c£
the roots of the Third Reich, [see Peter Viereck, Metapolitics:
Roots of the Nazi Mind]. The two groups, the Bayreuth circle
and Hitler’s National Socialists came to parallel conclusions.
Because the Bayreuth circle antedated the other does not
guarantee that the first group caused the second to act in 2
similar way. It shows that the two groups drew on a common
heritage.
Hitler had been exposed to the ideas and perspectives
and writings of many Nineteenth Century racists long before he
knew of the Bayreuth circle. Hitler never knew Wagner directly.
He did not think of Wagner in any way other than as the
greatest of the German composers and poets. Rosenberg had
seen the Protocols while still a student in Russia before the
Bolshevik Revolution.
When the two parallel schools of finally met they gloried
in their similar views. Each group honed its anti-semitism by
drawing on the other. Given the intensity with which each group
held its ideas and ideologies, each group would have been far
too inflexible to have allowed the other group’s ideas to
substantially modify its views. What probably emerged was a
more precise and systematic statement of the position and a
more precise form of the ideology.

Houston Chamberlain

Alfred Rosenberg planned The Myth of the Twentieth

Century as a sequel and as a tribute to his intellectual mentor.
Stewart Houston Chamberlain. Houston Chamberlain was
overjoyed at the prospects of a sequel being published to his
Foundations ofthe Nineteenth Century. He regarded Rosenberg’s
Myth of the Twentieth Century as the continuation of his work.
Reportedly, when he first read The Myth of the Twentieth
 Scientific Racism 191
Century tears of happiness flowed from his eyes. By the time
tosenberg had completed the Myth Chamberlain was an old
can confined to a wheelchair.
Both of these men sought to create, foster, encourage
«3d develop a superior race of beings. Both believed that
Mimankind was divided absolutely into superior and inferior
>eings. No moral sentiment, charity or human action could
sake it otherwise. The superior must not commit "racial
pollution" by sexually intermixing with inferior beings. It would
Je best if the inferior and the superior did not live together at
ill. ’
Each work was considered by its author to be a seminal
itudy of the major forces that were coalescing in, and forming
the future of, their respective centuries. The future was
determined by the rightful ordering and manipulation of these
forces. Neither attributed the kind of historical necessity to his
voice of history that Marx gave to a dialectical and historical
materialism. The human volitional element is determining in
the works of these two men.
Houston Stewart Chamberlain thought of the Aryan race
as a probable fiction. It may have existed, but this is uncertain.
’Even if it were to be proven that there never was an Aryan
race," he wrote, "we should want that there be one in the
future." This was heresy to Rosenberg who considered that
there had been such a superior race. It had existed in the ages
past among Nordics and it had type-forming power. It had
created the supreme values, honor and courage, for the entire
Nordic race. It had existed and made laws and developed
culture and worshiped God. It had discovered laws of the.
universe and cosmic truths which were passed down mythically
to the German people. Truth was written in the hearts of
members of the German nation who had only to look inside to
discover, in a mystical way, these pathways to the divinity. The
primal and formative power of the great racial past leads
192 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg’s man to resist the Asian-Roman elements of Jewish-

Roman Christianity. Without this type-forming power the myth
of creation derived from Judaism would have entirely displaced
the Nordic myth of an eternal world.
Chamberlain thought of a race as something that could
be created by the will-act of mankind or by accident. One
begins with superior stock, "but if someone asks me where tha:
stock comes from, I have to answer, I do not know." That stock
is then isolated from the outside over a period of mans
generations. During that time it is completely homogenized. A
thorough mixture guarantees that all members will share in bes;
elements of all that the basic stock has to offer. If all has gone
well, and if the stock was potentially superior, a superior race
will necessarily emerge. Careful breeding requires that inferior?
be culled out as they appear. "The lessons of eugenics have
been learned in the horse barns and cattle farms," Chamberlain
said. Inferior beings who exhibit undesirable traits will be
destroyed, or at least sterilized so they can produce no
offspring.
Rosenberg has no problem determining where the
superior stock came from. It was comprised of Nordic racial
types. Superiority of the Aryan race is a given. It is an a prion
gratuitous assumption. It is a mythical truth, known in a way
transcending mere physical proof. One cannot understand
Rosenberg unless one understands this first principle. The
Nordic race is superior and all other races are inferior to it in
varying degrees.
The Nordic race has a five thousand year old history. It
is but one of several separate and distinct races and is unrelated
to the black, yellow, Asian-Jewish, Mediterranean, Celtic and
Alpine races, or to any other racial group. Only the Nordic race
can produce or may become the Superman. The Superman is
a product of the superior race. No inferior race ever produce a
superior being.
 Scientific Racism 193
Chamberlain suggested that there may be several, even
nany, Aryan races, since the term Aryan applies not to a
'pecial ethnic-racial grouping, but is used synonymously with
Superman, "They may have the most varied color of hair and
‘yes, skin color, and body and facial configurations," he wrote.
3 fie group of Aryans will seek out other Aryan groups to share
Jeas and cultures and to communicate all maimer of things.
There is no single area in which the overman can or does live.
So long as the proper stock exists one may find any race
aroducing Aryans.
Houston Chamberlain’s ecumenical approach to the
Xryan races was wholly alien to Rosenberg. In his view there is
2 definite Aryan racial type, the "blue eyed, blonde haired race"
is Nietzsche had called them. It is inconceivable that there
could be an Asian or black Aryan grouping in Rosenberg’s
thought. The Aryan lives in Northern Europe, although he has
chosen to migrate all over the globe. So long as he maintains
his racial purity he may continue to live in other areas. But he
cannot expect to find other Aryans in the far corners of the
globe.
Nordic man’s Volk culture would not appeal to other
races, nor would theirs be of interest to him. In his discussion
of aesthetics Rosenberg specifically warned of the dire
consequences of taking on an alien culture and making its
cultural-art forms one’s own. Each culture produces its own
racially based artifacts. Rosenberg argued that the native racial
soul would be damaged through prolonged exposure to the
artifacts of alien cultures.
Houston Chamberlain would have had his Aryan seek
out the cultural artifacts and products of other Aryan cultures.
One Aryan culture would not adopt another Aryan culture’s
artistic style and incorporate it into its own. It would admire the
products of another superior culture as an expression of the
superior mind. Rosenberg had no objection to that.
194 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg credited Houston Chamberlain with another

very important idea: psychic forms determine physical forms.
The Nordic soul creates a certain psychic form; the Jewish yet
another, and so on. There is a tie between the racial soul of the
individual and what would then be a predetermined form. Jf
races mixed the result would be the creation of a hybrid soul
that would not have its full compliment of Nordic (or any other
racial) attributes. The alien soul would more likely emerge from
this union as the dominant. The product, of an illicit love
between a blonde haired, blue-eyed German and a woolly­
haired, dark-haired Jew would more likely look Jewish, not
Nordic. Rosenberg concluded that the Nordic soul was a
delicate, precious and precarious thing. A single incident of
miscegenation could have grave consequences for generations
to come, so brittle is the Nordic soul.
Rosenberg shared some of Houston Chamberlain’s basic
ideas on racism. They generally agreed on a total rejection of
non-Aryan cultures. Neither would consider the black race to be
capable generally of accomplishing much of anything. Both men
shared the general European historical view of the Nineteenth
Century and early Twentieth Century that only white cultures
had created civilization or were capable of creating civilization.
The only place that black and brown states and cultures had in
history was that forged when they came into contact with the
superior European civilizations. Essentially, the same is true of
Oriental culture. While the Chinese had created civilization in
the past, they had stagnated over the last several millennia.
There are substantial, perhaps irreconcilable, differences
between Rosenberg and Chamberlain. They share the racist
view of history. Rosenberg is the more inflexible racist. He also
placed greater emphasis on maintaining racial purity in
northern Europe.
 Scientific Racism 195
Arthur, Count de Gobineau

Perhaps the best know racist work of the Nineteenth

Century was the Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
written by a French aristocratic conservative, Joseph Arthur
Compte de Gobineau (1816-1882). Gobineau accepted the
existence of only three races in the world: white, yellow and
black.
His true research interest was the Orient and he was
considered one of the leading Western scholars on Oriental
history and culture. The Essay was the result of his comparison
East with West. His passion for the Orient led him to conclude
that there were many values in that area of the world. Among
the yellow race, there was much that justified consideration and
even emulation.
He was also interested in black races. He researched
extant Western records on Africa, and, to a degree, on the
Indian and Pacific Ocean islands inhabited by blacks. His first
conclusion was quite simple. He completely dismissed the black
race from historical consideration. Gobineau concluded that
blacks were incapable of producing a culture worthy of study.
They were "forever forced to grovel at the feet of their white
masters." Blacks, Gobineau argued, are lethargic, even lazy. Left
to themselves, blacks will accomplish nothing of value. They do
little except that absolute minimum necessary to survive. They
hunt and gather food and plant only when necessity forces this
on them. They are of interest to the West only because they live
in areas which contain vital, natural resources. They cannot
harvest or utilize these materials themselves. It is just and right
that Caucasian peoples exploit the resources and direct the
natives. A caste system in which white men direct and order the
natives benefits both races.
Much of Gobineau’s writing is concerned with how
various peoples and races provide food, clothing and shelter.
196 Alfred Rosenberg

The life habits and provisions for the necessities of life is the
most rudimentary in black culture of all peoples. Their
indolence forces them into subsistence living. It invites the
white races to make them slaves. There can be no serious stud*
of such a primitive group simply because there is nothing
worthy of a white man’s effort to investigate. The black races
have no history of their own. They enter history only when the
white race comes in contact with them.
Black religions are pure superstition. They touch only the
most basic appetites. Thus, among black races we find 3
temperamental predisposition to choose fertility rites over more
complex religious practices. They seek a natural, physical god
in the elements. A tree, a rock or lightning attract their
attention. Black races could never comprehend an abstract
notion of God as a spiritual being. Being unable to conceive of
a spiritual God, they could never come to an understanding of
morality or values.
The only predominating feature of black races that
interests Gobineau is their propensity for a vivid imagination.
They have the ability to day-dream and to conceive of unusual,
albeit bizarre, things. This is a trait that is unique in an
otherwise uninteresting race. Imagination is.pseful in producing
certain types of art, although it often leads to a depiction of the
grotesque.
He dismissed blacks, saying they had produced nothing
of value and had no history, The corrupting influence of their
inferior souls brought utter desolation to those peoples that had
significant admixtures of black blood. Gobineau did question,
as a good Catholic, whether blacks even had souls. He classified
the red-men of American and the various brown and Polynesian
peoples as being products of mixtures of the other races with
the black. Because black blood predominated none of these
peoples had histories or had produced cultures.
 Scientific Racism 197
On first reading one might conclude that Gobineau had
become so involved with the Oriental culture that he concluded
h was superior to the white. This is not true. In the final
analysis, he did come to a preference of European culture. In
Gobineau’s view the yellow race is vastly superior to the black.
There is a nearly infinite gap between the yellow and black
races. There is a gap between white and black, although the
<pread between the two races is not as great as it is between
the yellow and black races. The gap between yellow and white
is very small. The yellow race can produce a meaningful culture,
although, to a large degree, it has stagnated in recent centuries.
As an unreconstructed aristocratic conservative,
Gobineau extolled the virtues of a caste society. He admired
the governmental principle of Confucius: everyone fixed in his
place, bound in duty to those above with emperor bound in
duty to the heavens above. Had the Europeans had such a
system the revolutions that toppled the aristocrats from their
lofty positions would have been prevented. The Chinese seemed
to have solved the riddle of government and society.
The ancient Aryans of India had established the same
caste-based order. India had declined as a result of the
absorption of Aryan leadership into inferior, dark races. Once
the light-skinned Aryans had ruled. They had brought law,
order, prosperity and honor. They had made the dark-skinned
races their servants. The caste system, Gobineau argued, had
benefitted all. When miscegenation destroyed racial integrity,
the Aryans faltered. Chaos followed. The Aryan characteristics
were lost and the racial soul no longer spoke.
Gobineau assumed progress in the technologically
advanced areas. This was self-evident. Progress, however, was
impossible in the social sciences. Governments should be run by
an hereditary elite, the aristocrats. Racial inferiors were
unsuited for the tasks and responsibilities of governing.
198 Alfred Rosenberg

Rosenberg was not an aristocrat and he had no stake a’

interest in governance by an aristocracy which had inherited iu
powers. His elite was an aristocracy of race, or merit and of
knowledge. Entry was guaranteed primarily through strength of
the Volk will and through ability to express the racial essence
as a type-former.
Gobineau divided the Oriental race into several sub­
races: Altaics, Mongols, Tartars and Finns. He referred to the
black race as the Himatics, and no sub-division, excepting racial
mixtures, was needed. He divided the white race into three
racial sub-groups: Semites, Caucasians and Japhetics. He
established a hierarchy established among both the white and
the yellow races. Gobineau recognized that there was no pure
strain to any race, and all the races and sub-races had at least
traces of alien peoples in their blood. To a degree this is very
good. Imagination is a quality lacking in the white race
generally, and this must be supplied by "a drop" of black blood.
Within the white race the Teutonic Caucasian sub-group
was clearly superior. Gobineau assumed that it was the least
"polluted" or intermixed sub-group. He considered the Semites
to be the most bastardized. The Caucasian sub-group alone
produces high culture and true civilization. It was exclusively for
this reason, the existence of the Teutons as the dominant force
in Europe, that Gobineau chose Western civilization over the
Oriental race. He preferred Oriental rule to that of the Semites.
Gobineau had a pre-determined bias against Jews long before
he developed his scientific and cultural racism. Gobineau
objected to any and all things that the Jews had produced.
Many of those objections brought him into serious conflict with
the Roman Catholic Church.
Rosenberg classified the Jews and other Semites as
members of the Oriental race. He lacked Gobineau’s
appreciation of, and penchant for, Oriental civilization. His
 Scientific Racism 199

objections to Nordic scholars spending time studying alien

cultures is discussed, below, separately under aesthetics.
Rosenberg and Gobineau agreed on condemning the
reneral decay and decline of French civilization. Richard
Wagner had concluded that France was wholly corrupted after
ids exile in France. The narrative in The Myth of the Twentieth
Century followed Gobineau’s indictment of French civilization
ilmost completely. Wagner, Rosenberg and Gobineau all
concluded that France was completely overrun by Jews. Jewish
influence was greatest in the arts and culture. The French race
had become mixed with the widest array of other races. It was
bastardized beyond salvation. Western Europe could seek its
salvation only from Nordic-Teutonic Germany. Should Germany
become racially mixed there would be no source of protection
for Western Europe Culture.

The Protocols of Zion

Few documents in history have raised as many questions

and receives as many reviews as The Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion. These documents form the basis of modern anti­
semitism. These documents were well known in Russia and
much of Eastern Central Europe before the First World War.
Rosenberg was responsible for carrying them into Germany,
introducing them to the German people and popularizing their
contents. Editions of the Protocols have appeared in many
languages, including English. The American industrialist, Henry
Ford, used them as the basis for his The International Jew
published originally in his Dearborn Independent and then
edited into book form.
In his Der Weltverschworerkongress zu Basel (Munich,
1923) Rosenberg traces their history to the Zionist Conference
in Switzerland in 1896. Rosenberg edited a German edition of
200 Alfred Rosenberg

The Protocols, Die Protokollen der Weisen von Zion (Munich.

1923).
These documents reveal a worldwide conspiracy of Jews
to control the world through the manipulation of international
finance and precious metals. The Jews will create front
organizations to elect candidates to office using the democratic
process. Jewish leaders will then dictate policy. Rosenberg
claimed that the documents were proof of the long-rumored
Alliance Israelite Universelie.
The conspiracy was to be carried out with the aid of a
second group that had long been blamed for secretive and
conspiratorial activities, the Freemasons. Rosenberg reported
that The Protocols had been delivered from Basel, where the
Zionist Conference led by Theodore Herzl had been held, to
the Rising Sun Masonic Lodge in Frankfurt. Therein the
Masonic Lodge, someone betrayed the secrecy of these
documents and permitted an outsider to copy them.
The Protocols formed the major base of anti-semitism in
Germany. Rosenberg also raised the question of Jewish
involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution. In Pest in Russland
(Munich, 1922) Rosenberg claimed that the New York Jewish
banking house of Loeb, Kuhn & Company had financed the
communist revolution in Russia in 1917. Rosenberg drew
heavily on the writings of a white Russian anti-communist.
General Fyodor Viktorovich Vinberg, whose Berlin letters (1919)
had first advanced the thesis. The communists had been
successful because communism was a form of Judaism and had
been financed by the Jews. Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein] had
been the bag man, Vinberg claimed. Trotsky brought a fortune
from New York. On his return to Russia from his exile in the
United States Trotsky had the funds Lenin needed to bring
about the revolution in Russia.
The Protocols offered Rosenberg the opportunity to alter
the nature of anti-semitic literature. Instead of, or in addition
 Scientific Racism 201

to, the traditional religious anti-semitism ("Christ Killers")

Rosenberg added the new dimension of political anti-semitism.
Heretofore the religious attack on Jews had centered on their
Anti-Christian philosophy. Rosenberg cast them in the mold of
being subversives whose aim was political control of the world.
Having failed to control Gentiles through Christianity, they now
disdained to conceal their ambitions, and sought to use pluto-
democratic devices in the Western plutocracies to manipulate
the world.
Political anti-semitism had its intellectual roots in the
many writings of August von Schlegel, Johann Fichte and
Ludwig Jahn. Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation (1808)
argued that other nations had been influenced by Jewish
Roman Christianity and Jewish internationalism. Germany
alone was immune to Jewish acculturation. It alone was capable
of creating a synthesis of nationalism and national Kultur and
the forces of the universe. The powers of Kultur and nationalism
could combat Jewish internationalism.
August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767-1845) and Friedreich
Wilhelm von Schlegel (1772-1829) advanced the idea of a
German "cult of life", world idea (Weltanschauung), which is at
the heart of German romanticism. The life-force perception of
life impels the German to reject alien, especially Jewish,
perceptions of the world.
"Father" Ludwig Jahn combined the idea of a unique
German perception of the world from the Schlegels
(Weltanschauung) with the concept of a superior German Kultur
and mythology to create .a German Volksgeist (Folk Spirit) that
is decidedly anti-Jewish. As the most ardent German nationalist
of his time Ludwig Friedreich Jahn (1778-1852) was opposed to
the Jews for political and not religious reasons.
Against this background Rosenberg honed and perfected
his political attacks on Judaism. He grounded his polemics in
attacks on the Jewish race, not the Jewish religion. The
202 Alfred Rosenberg

Protocols provided very powerful ammunition and he used it

with great enthusiasm. Rosenberg‘s political attack on the Jews
came at a time when the average German was more politically
aware, the result in large measure of the Weimar democracy.
The time was ripe for racists to renew the attack on the Jewish
race. Since religious anti-semitism no longer drew the support
it once it, Rosenberg supplied a new formula for anti-semitism.
The Myth was a political work, although it had religious
sections.
Rosenberg used references to the past, to Fichte, Jahn,
the Schlegels and others very effectively. This gave a greater
legitimacy to his political anti-semitism than would have been
possible using The Protocols alone. By invoking the past, people
accepted Rosenberg’s arguments more readily.

Scientific Racism

Rosenberg justified his scientific racism by arguing that

the Jews were an alien race which threatened the indivisible
and organic Volk. Jewish ideas were wholly alien to Nordic
racial ideas. Those alien ideas were at odds with the VolkKultur
and the spirit of the nation, Volksgeist. Rosenberg argued that
the Jews held a different set of values. Their acts and deeds
were inspired by a different racial soul. They are not, in
Rosenberg’s analysis, honorable. They are not prompted to act
by the typical Nordic motivating factors of duty and obligation.
Their values represent a dishonorable tradition based on «
national penchant for accumulation of wealth. Their supreme
values are based on accumulation of money irrespective of the
consequences for non-Jews with whom they deal. They are
driven to commerce and money-lending. Their supreme values
are greed and avarice. Their drive for materials things follows
from their supreme values. [Die Spur, pp. 130-31,153],
 Scientific Racism 203

Jews will not practice agricultural skills. They migrated

to cities that other races had built, there to practice commerce,
trade and usury. They avoid working the soil whenever possible.
They have no agricultural skills. They just do not want to work
any useful trade. [Die Spur, pp.130-31].
Nordic values favor nationalism. Jewish values favor
internationalism,. Jews, Rosenberg wrote, are incapable of any
form of patriotism. They retain their own separation while
urging others to accept alien races and to practice
miscegenation. [Schriften aus den Jahren, p.103; Der
Zukunftsweeg einer deutschen Aussenpolitik, p. 41].
Rosenberg’s historical romanticism led him to prefer the
true medieval, and thus principally rural, life. The peasant and
the man engaged in light production, wood-cutting and mining
were only real producers of national wealth. Rosenberg is more
in step with Doctor Quesnay and the French physiocrates than
with any other school of economics. Mercantilism with its
emphasis on the accumulation of material wealth in national
treasuries was in keeping with the Jewish economic thought.
The Jews paid not an iota of attention to the wealth of the
peasants.
Rosenberg studied the Talmud and concluded that the
Talmud and other Jewish writings directed men away from the
soil. There were few Jewish farmers in Germany. Most were
engaged in trade, commerce, and banks and the stock exchange.
Rosenberg made all of those professions targets of ridicule and
scorn in the Myth, [see, also, Unmoral im Talmud]. No people
that rejected farming and looked only to a parasitical existence,
living off the earnings of farmers could be good.
Rosenberg blamed the Jews for many vices, especially
those which he associated with urban life. His list of "Jewish
vices" included homosexuality, prostitution, miscegenation,
sodomitic behavior and general licentious living. These, he
argued, were the heritage of Jewish domination of urban
204 Alfred Rosenberg

culture. The lure of these vices brought young men off the
farms and charmed them into living where the Jews could
control them more easily. Unscrupulous Jews offered fame and
wealth and luxury to young women who then ended up in red
light districts. These wicked ways could be circumvented if
Germany turned its people back to farming, [see Schriften aus
den Jahren, pp. 120ff; Unmoral in Talmud', Die Spur, pp.280ff].
In an obscure essay, The World-centered Jew Lacks a
Soul, Rosenberg argued that a few Jews should be left in the
state after the Nazi counter-revolution. They would provide an
excellent example of what the German is not. By continuing to
know the Jew, the state could continue to retain its immunity
to his "disease".
Rosenberg offered an analogy to the human body
fighting off an alien organism. A few of the disease-carrying
organisms are left purposefully so that the body’s immune
system will continue to produce anti-toxins to protect itself.
Germany fell prey to the Jews because it knew him not. it gave
all men the benefit of doubt, thinking that all men were
honorable. When Nordic man discovered the Jew lacked these
Aryan characteristics he was unable to resist. By that time, the
Jew had gained a secure foothold which he would not
relinquish.
The carnage and bloodshed of World War One gave rise
to a new weapon in the German national struggle against alien
ideas and foreign races, the Mythus. As used in Houston
Chamberlain’s Die Grundlagen des XIX Jahrunderts (1899) the
term implied a mysterious (i.e., mythical) hyper-national, willful
infusion of spirit (Geist) into the Volk. The Mythus could bind
the Volk to the nation. Its national values (including religion)
and those mysterious forces of nature carry special messages for
the German people.
The fermenting of blood of the German heroes killed in
so many battles of the war, a war without honor in victory,
 Scientific Racism 205
proved that the honorable, brave men did not die in vain. It was
their putrefying lifeblood that awakened or created a new
feeling, supreme level of Kultur. So powerful was the effect of
this blood-serum that the nation could be immunized in a single
step against the evils and debasing powers of alien races. This
was the myth of the present century. It required immediate
action by the Volk or its magic powers would be lost forever.
 Race and Anti-Race

Rosenberg shared a plan in particular with Adolf Hitler.

Both men wanted to create a racially homogenous state in
middle Europe. They would strip a vast area of all non­
Germans (anti-races) and repopulate where requisite with
Germans (race). There might be outlying areas wherein non­
Germans would, under the control of German overseers,
provide the physical labor. One of the lesser known National
Socialists, Doctor General Karl Haushofer, a former German
liaison with the Japanese military, espoused the idea of living
space. Germany had no interest in colonies in Europe, the
Americas or Asia. What Germany needed was living space in
Europe. That was to be the primary goal of future German
foreign policy.
Other nations had recognized the right of nations to
racially constitute their soil. Many nations had done so. The
sound National Socialist policy recognized the racial uniqueness
of all peoples. Their had an absolute right of self-determination
in their own racial territory. The main problem of history was
simple. Many states competed for the same land because there
had been a racial state ruled by their ancestors. Because
empires had arisen and had fallen it was the tragedy of history
that only a few states might ever operate in their ancestral
homelands.

Each Race has its soul and each soul belongs to a race .... Each race
in the long run cultivates only one supreme ideal. Will this be transmuted or
even dethroned by overwhelming infiltration of alien blood and alien ideas?
Certainly the consequences of this internal change will be marked externally
by chaos and periods of catastrophe. For this supreme value of race demands
a definite grouping of other life values which are conditioned by it. To tolerate
at the same time and at the same place two or more Weltanschauungen each
one related to a different supreme value which these people arc presumed to
share, means an ominous interim solution which carries the germ of a new
catastrophe. Should this invading system succeed ... it would mean the death
of the cultural soul which would disappear from this earth. The life of a race
208 Alfred Rosenberg
of people is not to be understood as a logically developed philosophy, nor the
result of a process which conformed to natural laws, but the unfolding of a
mystical synthesis, an activity of the soul, which cannot be explicated by reasoc
nor conceived as a causal process .... The real Tight today is not so much foe
externally shifting power ... but rather for a rebuilt soul structured to the
Nordic peoples, a reinstatement of their right to dominate their ideas and
values from which comes the preservation of the racial substance. [Afyt/i of
The Twentieth Century, pp. 116-17, 119].

The National Socialists charted a hierarchy of races. The

Germans and other racially related Nordics were the race. The
Jews and related peoples such as Gypsies were anti-race. The
great struggle in Europe was between race and anti-race.
Rosenberg had no particular objection to the anti-race in a
homeland of its own, or in foreign nations. He saw no future to
a Germany which was racially mixed.
Soul means race seen from within and vice-versa. Race is the outer
form of the soul. To bring a race-soul to its full potential means recognizing
its supreme value and also assigning to other values their [lower] organic place
in the state system, in art and in religion. That is the great mission of our
century: to create a new human type out of a new life myth. [Myth, p. 2]

From the beginning Judaism was less a religion than it

was a militant institution designed to preserve Jewish racial
identity and advance Jewish interests. [Blut und Ehre, p.15].
Rosenberg had three basic objections to this principal anti-race,
the Jews. First, he objected that they had no homeland of their
own, or had lost it, and had settled as aliens among the Gentile
populations of Europe. He accused the Jews of seeking to
racially intermix with their hosts. Rosenberg accused them of
dominating the economy of Gentile nations and using the
usurious profits and ill-gotten gains to advance international
Judaism.
Second, Rosenberg accused the Jews of subverting
Christianity. Having failed to eradicate the Christian message,
 Race and Anti-Race 209

first by crucifying Christ, and then by persecuting his followers,

they sent Saul to control the theology. Saul (or Saint Paul)
bound Christianity inexorably to Judaism. The Jews made
Christ’s message into a continuation of Judaism. Jews had an
essential role in salvation. "Salvation is of the Jews" [John 4:22].
Third, Jews invented Bolshevism. Rosenberg wrote that
Bolshevism was the highest form of Judaism. In this Rosenberg
followed the lead of Dietrich Eckhardt’s Bolshevism from Moses
to Lenin. Without Jews, beginning with Karl Marx and
continuing through Lenin and his Jewish Politburo, Bolshevism
was the ideology of an alien race.
If Christianity was to be made acceptable to the National
Socialists it had to be stripped of its Jewish elements. Many
Germans had made this argument long before the birth of
Alfred Rosenberg. Rosenberg discovered the volkish elements
of German national Christianity as early as Meister Eckhart
(1260-1327) and found reinforcement in the nationalistic
writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Paul
LeGarde (1827-1891). Rosenberg saw himself as the tool for the
fulfillment of a centuries old dream of German theologians and
philosophers. Certainly, Hegel’s ponderous efforts at the
recreation of Lutheran Protestantism and Luther’s nationalism
could be construed to be within the Aryan religious tradition.

The Jews and Christianity

Rosenberg presented Saint Paul as a legalistic thinker

concerned primarily with creating a new law for the Hebrew
people to take the place of the Mosaic law. Paul’s efforts are
thus those of first apostle and prophet of a new system of law.
Moses received the law from Jehovah, and the Old Testament
viewed these laws as the handiwork of God. That the law had
been offered through Moses gave Moses a kind of secular
salvation. The Jewish God created Moses as Hero. All who
210 Alfred Rosenberg

obeyed law accepted Moses as well as Jehovah. We remember

the law Jehovah gave Moses as the Mosaic Code, more than as
the code of Jehovah. The beauty of the message of Jehovah was
to be found in its simplicity and its morality. Two Hebrews,
Moses and Saint Paul, filled the roles as codifiers of the law.
Their codification was tantamount to the prostitution of the
message. What Moses had done to the law of the Old
Testament, Saint Paul was to do to the new law of the New
Testament.
The Syrian-Roman mind and the Jewish mind sought
legal formalities where none were needed and where they could
do nothing more than obscure the message. The Jew thus
became not the prophet of the law, but the destroyer of the law.
The law which Rosenberg was willing to accept was that which
could be written romantically in the hearts of men. It need not
be expressed in a formal and legalistic way. The law as written
by the two Hebrew prophets was cold and formalistic and
sought universal dimensions. The law sought by Rosenberg
would be informal and applied as a necessary part of the volk
soul.
Although he wholly accepted Luther as a Volk hero,
Rosenberg rejected the bases of Lutheranism. Luther had
discovered the message of justification by reading through Saint
Paul. The Lutheran Paul was not the Hebrew lawyer. As Luther
saw him, Saint Paul was anything but the formalist, the lawyer’s
law-maker. Still, Rosenberg had little difficulty in discovering
anti-semitic elements in Luther. Perhaps Paul had found it
necessary to accept some of the Christian elements taught and
formulated by non-Jews, such as justification by faith alone,
while adding his own rigid formalism to the law.
Saint Paul had been a necessary part of the Jewish
corruption of Christianity. In Rosenberg’s reconstruction of the
early days of the Christian church, the Jews had found it quite
necessary to subvert the new doctrine from within, having failed
 Race and Anti-Race 211
to eradicate it from without.The crucifixion of Christ had not
ended Christianity. It had given the new Nordic sect a martyr
and an incentive to grow and expand. The ideas of Christ were
a danger to the Hebrews and their tightly-knit control over the
peoples of the area. Having failed to prevent Christianity from
growing, the remaining alternative was to capture and Judaize
it. This was St. Paul’s mission. In Rosenberg’s view the Jew
selected Paul because he was the most brilliant scholar and the
most able propagandist available.
Rosenberg’s explanation is compatible with the Nordic
reconstruction of Saul’s career, provided one accepts a secular,
not a religious, reconstruction of Saul’s conversion. Saul
admittedly had persecuted Christians, but he had failed in his
mission of destruction; He then converted and used Jewish
legalism to undermine Christianity’s principal, non-Jewish
teachings. He created a bureaucratic hierarchy and a set of
rules and modes of conduct which were essentially Jewish.
If Christianity became a Jewish sect, there would be little
outside interference with its relations with the Jewish dependent
government. The crucifixion of Christ would appear to have
been merely an internal matter within Judaism, and not a
matter of competition between Jewish and non-Jewish
teachings.
Christianity could be used to subvert Rome in a way not
possible with the traditional religious practices of the Hebrews
because it attracted Gentiles. Thus, Judaism need not recruit
Gentiles into its elite racial circle, but it could use Gentiles to
fight the Jewish war for Jewish causes. Christianity already
offered a universalist outlook, one that could encompass all of
the many nations of the Roman Empire. It would have a Jewish
legal basis and Hebrew control. r Thus, Rosenberg saw
Christianity, as developed by Saint Paul, as an active agent
aimed at the destruction of the Roman Empire. The destruction
212 Alfred Rosenberg

of Roman power could foreshadow the re-emergence of the

independent Jewish state in Palestine.
In the complicated conspiracy in which Saint Paul was
either an active agent or sacrificial goat, "the earth-centered
Jew" was acting as conspirator. Rosenberg suggested that this
was the first of many times the Jew would be the manipulator
of Gentile nations. The Jews performed this manipulation
irrespective of the consequences that manipulation might have
on other nations and peoples.
The Jewish religious conspiracy, as seen by Rosenberg,
offered a universalist philosophy of mankind, via Christianity,
for the non-Jewish peopled of the world, while, at the same
time, retaining a non-catholic view of the Jewish nation. Jews
sought to destroy the nationalistic spirit of the Gentile nations
while strengthening their own position as a unique people
possessed of special characteristics and a special relation to
Jehovah. Jehovah held a unique position among all gods which
had been known heretofore. He was the single deity, to the
exclusion of all other gods, yet He was concerned only with the
fate of the Jews. In the Old Testament He was willing to
destroy non-Jews in order to provide homelands and other
material things, while denying himself to the Gentiles. The non­
Jew was in a hopeless position. He could not become a Jew,
and he could not find the true God without being Jewish.
Rosenberg, following German-Protestant nationalistic
theologians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
concluded that Christianity could be made acceptable to Nordic
peoples only by removing the Old Testament from the basic
book of worship. The Old Testament was nothing more than a
highly racist and nationalistic history of the Hebrew peoples
cast against a religious background. The Hebrews, as Rosenberg
saw them in the Old Testament, had accomplished absolutely
nothing in, of or by themselves. They were parasites. All they
had been given to them by Jehovah. They, alone among peoples
 Race and Anti-Race 213

mentioned in the Old Testament, had not earned their

livelihood by the sweat of their faces [Gen. 3:19].
The Jews had justified their holocausts against non-Jews
by relating the events to the will of God. Their extermination
of the peoples inhabiting the Promised Land was the work of
the Lord of Hosts. This was realistic and moral because it was
backed by the will of Jehovah. All secular events, especially
wars of aggression, were imposed on the Jews by Jehovah. To
suggest that such actions were morally wrong required that one
question the will and purposes of the single deity.
So long as Saint Paul was successful in relating
Christianity to Jewish traditions, there would be no question
about the genocidal policies of the Jews in earlier years. Saint
Paul had made Christianity into the child of Judaism, and had
substituted Jewish history for the real teachings of Christ. All
non-Jews who accepted Jewish-Christianity were to long for the
day when the New Jerusalem was instituted and the Jewish
homeland restored to the Hebrew peoples. This unique bridging
of. the religious experiences gave the Jews a special place in
Christian teaching. They were not separated in any way from
the mainstream of Christianity as an alien people, but were
made into an integral part of the millennium which would end
only when the Jews once again held a homeland in Palestine.
It was this tradition that prompted Rosenberg’s attacks
on the Old Testament. Rejecting the notion that Christianity
could somehow make the Old Testament acceptable to a
restored Aryan Christianity, he merely did the simplest thing:
he removed the Old Testament from consideration. A few
National Socialists attempted to prove that the Jews of the Old
Testament were Aryans. Other National Socialists thought that
the true Jews had all converted to Christianity and been
assimilated by other, non-Jewish peoples, while leaving their
heritage to a handful of Asiatic stragglers who were racially
unrelated to the historical Jews of the Old Testament fame. But
214 Alfred Rosenberg

these ideas, although periodically discussed, were not in the

mainstream of National Socialist thought.
It is most important to understand the full consequences
of Rosenberg’s new reformation. While most Protestant
theologians had rejected only a few of the very last books of the
Old Testament, books retained in Roman Catholic Bibles, there
remained a general acceptance of the Old Testament. Orthodox
Christians thought the Old Testament was a source of
considerable inspiration to the faithful. Some Protestant groups,
notably the Puritans, had accepted the Hebrew ideas of a
theocracy. They had attempted to create political covenants
based on the Old Testament, as in the Massachusetts Bible
Colony in America. It appeared that Jehovah and the Old
Testament meant more to John Calvin and many of followers
than did Christ and the New Testament. Many Protestant
fundamentalists defended a literal interpretation of the Old
Testament, including the whole of Jewish history. During the
Age of Enlightenment, both Roman Catholics and Protestants
defended the literal interpretation of whole of the Bible.
Catholics and Protestants united against the atheistic charges
levelled at Christianity by apostles of science. Nowhere within
orthodoxy had there been a serious suggestion that Christianity
should be reconstructed without the Old Testament.
What Rosenberg offered was a Christianity based only
on "the true teachings of Christ," absent its Jewish elements.
This meant not only removing the Old Testament, it meant the
removal of all Pauline writings. Rosenberg would add to the
Bible German-Nordic-Aryan writings, writings that rejected the
idea of the universality of humankind and substituted ideas
based in race consciousness and class.
Where the Christian churches had heretofore recognized
the spiritual accomplishments of the good man by canonizing
him and by proclaiming him blessed and a saint, National
Socialism was prepared to do the same thing to a whole race.
 Race and Anti-Race 215
In this, Rosenberg was emulating the Jewish idea of a chosen
people. They substituted the Germans for the Jews. The
distinction philosophers heretofore had made between man
before the fall and man after the fall from God’s grace the
National Socialists made between the Nordic race and the
Jewish anti-race. The Nordic church would be prepared to
condemn whole races, notably the Jews. Between the Nordic
race at the top and the Jewish race at the bottom came all
other races in a perfect hierarchical order.
No orthodox Christian church was prepared to do these
things, leaving Rosenberg to fabricate his own church. Had an
orthodox church accepted the racial pre-condition that
Rosenberg imposed, there would have been other problems of
doctrine to overcome as well. Rosenberg concluded that, in the
long run, it would be easier to invent a whole new Nordic
religion.

Jews and the West

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion contains most

of Rosenberg’s critique of the Jews in western nations.
Rosenberg was probably more responsible for making Germany
aware of this publication than any other person. Reportedly,
The Protocols were prepared by Zionist leaders in 1896 at Basel,
Switzerland, as a secret part of the plan to create a homeland
in Palestine for European Jews.'iThe authors purportedly were
Zionist spokesmen Theodore Herzl and Max Nordau. The Jews
would control commerce and the money supply. In this age in
which nations used the gold standard the Jews would seek
control of large quantities of this precious metal.
Rosenberg developed and expanded on The Protocols in
three other books: Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten
[Munich: Eher, 1934]; Der Staatsfeindliche Zionismus\ and
Unmoral in Talmud [Munich: Central Press of the NSDAP,
216 Alfred Rosenberg

1943]. Many portions of the Myth of the Twentieth Century

returned to the themes of The Protocols.
Rosenberg’s idea of the Jew was simple: the Jew was
motivated only by the desire for profit. Individual profit was
acceptable, but it was even more praiseworthy for a Jew to
advance the economic well-being of all Jews. They had a "self-
chosen" preference for trade and money-lending ("usury"). They
migrated from nation to nation in pursuit of ever greater profit.
[Die Spur, pp.130-31]. Another way in which the "Jewish
penetration" occurred was by and through control of alcoholic
beverages.
By controlling international finance the Jews
could precipitate international financial crises. They could bring
economic ruin and financial chaos to Gentiles and to nations.
They made capitalist enterprises rise and fall according to their
will by manipulating the stock market. The stock market was
itself a Jewish invention. They made money by causing stocks
to rise and fall, while adding nothing to a nation’s production
by this manipulation. As Rosenberg wrote, "In Jewish
materialism rested the entire strength and weakness of the Jew.
His strength is in the life of nations, his influence is in all areas
which concern the ego: trade, economy, economic life."
[Schriften aus den Jahren, pp. 121-23].
A Jewish state was an impossibility because in the areas
in which Jews had lived historically, they have developed
horizontally into a limited number of trades. There was no
vertical organization among Jews because they would not sink
to work a manual trades or agriculture. Their numbers included
no farmers, craftsmen, tradesmen, artisans, technicians,
engineers, warriors or philosophers. Jewish statesmen had no
real experience in nation building, for they were
internationalists. Zionism as a true mission to found and
maintain a state with minimal or no outside support was a hoax
and a lie. Zionism really sought to control all western nations
 Race and Anti-Race 217

economically and financially. Jewish parasitical instincts could

not be restrained, even by living in their holy land. [Myth,
p.464].
The Jews had created and underwritten bourgeois
parliamentary democracy. They had manipulated parliamentary
elections and had made laws favorable to their maintenance of
power in representative bodies. They controlled the democratic
press and made certain that their newspapers published only the
news that the Jewish leaders approved. All the work the Jews
had done in support of liberal democracies they had done to
achieve a master international state and a superinternational
bureaucracy and administration [see Die Protokollen, pp. 36, 40-
41, 43-45, 48, 50-53, 61-63, 81-83].
The Jews had no creative talent. They could imitate what
Gentiles had created. If a Gentile wrote a great symphony or
concerto the Jews would take it over. But they could not create
a great piece of music. Their, race-was culturally barren. They
controlled the market in artistic creations, such as painting and
sculpture. Through their control of the newspapers and
magazines they created their own sterile standards of artistic
achievement. Jews hated the Nordic peoples especially because
Nordics had been the true creators of great art, music,
literature, drama, painting and sculpture. [Myth, pp.127-28].
The Jews also lacked the ability to contribute
scientifically to the material well-being of the Gentiles in whose
land they lived as a parasites. Jewish science was built on faulty
premises and assumptions and could never lead to any good.
[Schriften aus denJahren, p.99; Die Spur, p.143]. They fantasized
about how an idea could be marketed rather than concentrating
on refinement of the idea. No single creative idea in science
had originated among the Jews [Die Spur, pp.291-93].
Neither was the Jew adept at writing philosophy. That
was because the Jew had far different aims in his philosophy
than had the Notdic man. Philosophy must serve the Jew’s
218 Alfred Rosenberg

material aims, whereas Nordic philosophy served immaterial

aims. [Die Spur, pp. 282-84]. Their interest in medicine was
developed only so that they might manipulate and control the
ill and dying. [Die Spur, pp,291-93].
Jehovah gave special instructions to the Jews: control
Gentiles in any way that control can be established. He would
care for his people materially in this world. So long as the Jew
traded with the Gentile there were no limits on what he might
do to make money. He could lie, cheat and misrepresent his
product. Jehovah was less a spiritual god than a material one.
The Jewish Jehovah imposed no limitations on his chosen
people. [Die Spur, p.93].
Jews had rarely been patriotic. They knew no national
loyalty except to their own race. "Objectively, Jews are traitors
to their nation with every step they take." [Die Spur, p.109].
Without loyalty to the nations in which they lived, they were
"born conspirators." [Die Spur, p.232]. Rosenberg advocated the
denial of citizenship to Jews "so long as the Jews are permitted
to live on German soil." [Myth, pp. 578-79].

Jews and Communism

Rosenberg’s principal work on communism was Pest in

Russland: Der Bolsvhevismus seine Haupter, Handlanger und der
Opfrr (Munich: Eher, 1922]. He wrote of communism, which he
consistently called bolshevism, in other works. As a witness to
the October 1917 Revolution in Russia as a student in Moscow,
Rosenberg was more familiar with communism in practice than
the other National Socialists. He wrote from eyewitness, first
hand observation.
Karl Marx was a Jew, although his father had converted
to the Lutheran religion in order to better communicate with
the Prussian state. There is no evidence that Karl Marx was
ever a religious Jew. Marx had denounced the Jews in an essay
 Race and Anti-Race 219

little known in the West, A World Without Jews. But the

National Socialists argued that the Jews were a race, not a
religion, and Marx was a racial, if not religious, Jew. Marx had
created a world view whose aim was the eradication of western
civilization. Marx wrote of the working class although he had
never been a worker and knew precious little of manual labor.
His conception of the working class was a far cry from reality.
Nikolai Lenin was half Jewish in his racial heritage.
Lenin’s principal assistant and deputy leader, Leon Trotsky, had
been born Lev Bronstein, and was a racial, although not
religious, Jew. Trotsky had brought Jewish money from New
York to finance the bolsheviks in the October Revolution [Die
Protokollen, pp.36, 40-41, 43-45, 48, 50-53, 61-63 and 81 ff]. The
other members of the communist Politburo and Lenin’s inner
circle were Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Platykov and Bukharin
were racial Jews. Of those who had made the Revolution, only
Stalin, a Georgian, was not Jewish. More than any other race,
the Jews had contributed to and advanced the cause of
communism. [Blut und Ehre, pp.341, 345-46).
"Bolshevik blood” had dominated Russia for some time
before the Revolution. The Nordics had brought civilization to
Russia through the Varangians. The latter was a German elite,
brought to the land of the Rus to govern. The Varangians had
accounted for the prosperity of Kiev and Novgorod until the
Mongol invasion. Asiatic blood had defeated the Nordic blood.
When Moscow rejected Mongol rule, it was forced to come to
the Nordics again to provide artisans, craftsmen and tradesmen.
[Myth, pp.112-13]. With the introduction of bolshevism, Asiatic
blood once again defeated German blood in Russia.
The other, contemporary communist leaders of Europe
were also racial Jews. Although Lenin was responsible for their
deaths, Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg were of Jewish
extraction. Marx had denounced his contemporary communists
such as Ferdinand Lassalle. Simply, the powerful and more
220 Alfred Rosenberg

articulate Jews who were in power (Marx, Lenin and Trotsky)

had crushed the less successful dissidents (Kautsky, Lassalle and
Luxemburg).
Rosenberg had witnessed the mass executions of anti­
communists in Moscow, and heard of many more vendettas. He
had spoken with refugees from all parts of the old Russian
Empire and from Bela Kun’s six month regime in Hungary. He
knew that the essence of bolshevism was violence directed at
the anti- and non-communist peoples of all nations. The
liquidation of the educated and religious people was natural to
bolshevism.
Marxism was a form of secular humanism. Judaism as a
religion had served a certain purpose in the early history of the
Hebrew people. It was exhausted. A new secular idea, more
suited to the contemporary world, would replace Judaism.
Marxism was not a mode of economic explanation; it was a new
form of the old materialist conception of the world. [Die Spur,
pp.315-18].
Dietrich Eckhardt had argued in Bolshevism from Moses
to Lenin that the Jews had devised ideas that would allow them
to control other peoples. The Jews developed the magic idea
and sold it to the Gentiles. It mattered little what the exact
contents of the ideology-religion was. What mattered was that
the Gentiles had to pay homage to the Jews through the Jewish
ideology-religion.
The essential ingredients of bolshevism were
universalism and the class struggle. National Socialists rejected
the notion of warfare between the "haves" and the "have-nots."
The notion of class warfare created a smoke screen that hid the
real war, which was between race and anti-race. Jews had a
great stake in pitting German worker against German capitalist.
As long as race fought against race, race could not fight anti­
race. Bolshevism created a dictatorship in which it claimed the
elite ruled as, and on behalf of, the workers. By emphasizing
 Race and Anti-Race 221

class the bolsheviks were able to get all the people to forget
about establishing a racial state. Marxism called for civil war.
Anti-nationalist civil war would destroy all the Gentile
accomplishments of western civilization. [Die Spur, pp.315-18].
Marxist ideology was necessarily internationalist. Jewish
internationalism was diametrically opposed to German
nationalism. In foreign policy the Jews sought to unite all the
working people of the world into a single political entity. By
uniting all people, the Jews could control them more easily. The
Jews could manipulate them for their own purposes. On the
domestic level the Jews would work against recurrent
nationalism. They would subordinate all national interests to
Jewish international interests. Rosenberg argued that the reason
the Jews fought against nationalistic sentiments was that they
had no feelings for state or. nation, beyond the Zionist
homeland and race. They migrate to nations where they have
the best opportunities to advance their racial interests.
The battle in Germany in the 1920s and into the first
half of the 1930s had been between Jews and Germans,
between nationalists and internationalists, and between the race
and the anti-race. Bolshevism had succeeded in Bavaria, and it
had almost expanded into all of Germany. The red flag flew
over many parts of Berlin for most of 15 years. Evenings in
most German cities were marked by clashes between the
communists and the National Socialists. The National Socialist
line was consistent: Germany will either be ruled by National
Socialism or bolshevism. To the end, Rosenberg warned the
West that the real enemy of western civilization was Jewish
bolshevism.

The Reawakening of the Racial Soul

As a spiritual attribute of humankind, the racial soul is

unlocked only with the spiritual key. One cannot will to know
222 Alfred Bosenberg

his soul or the secrets he carries within him. He can come to

know these things only by a mythical or mystical experience.
One knows things to be supremely true to such a degree that
one needs no empirical verification. No genetic engineering can
alter the ethnic experiences that have necessarily made up a
race’s psychological profile. Races are what they are because of
the racial history of the people. Only race-chaos through race
mixing can alter the nature of the any race. The Jew and the
Aryan are what they are because of their racial souls. These
Jewish and Aryan souls are poles apart and cannot possibly be
reconciled.
The racially determined soul can respond meaningfully
only to the theology of the people. One cannot comprehend the
other. The human cannot comprehend what it is like to have
the consciousness of an amoeba, or vice-versa. One can never
experience the stimuli that move amoeba to act or to not act.
One cannot see the world through an amoeba’s eye. Any effort
to act like an amoeba is predestined to failure. Man must
perceive the world as a man, for that is what he is. But he is
not only a man, he is a member of a race with an ethnic history
and Kultur. Each race has its own world-view and its own
theology. If one chooses to view the civilization of Western
Europe he must be a Western European, not a Chinese, not a
black and not a Jew. Should a human ignore these racial stop­
signs he will lose his own Kultur without being able to join in
the culture of an alien race.
The supreme value a race holds determines its behavior
toward the inner self, the exterior world, and God. A Nordic
man enjoys the supreme value of honor. He will always carry
that potential within him, and so will his children provided only
that he does not destroy its vitality by race-mixing. He may
behave dishonorably, but deep down inside he will feel the
voice crying out, "Thou must not." On the surface a Nordic man
may practice the Jewish religion, but he will always and
 Race and Anti-Race 223
necessarily retain in the recesses of his soul his own racial
theology and characteristics. When mythically awakened these
properties will vanquish the alien ones, for they are of the soul
while the alien determinations are only of the flesh.
Just as the individual may awaken to his destiny, so also
may the entire race reawaken. The mythical experience of the
mystical event, World War I, is the event that Rosenberg
believes will cause Germany to be reborn. It has touched the
soul of all Nordic men and bring them to full racial
consciousness. That myth will combine with the other
metaphysically true myths out of the Nordic racial past and
determine the race to become what is presently only its
potential.
Then, alien cultures and civilizations in Germany will be
toppled and replaced by an entirely Nordic Kultur. Racially
motivated philosophy and theology will drive the alien forms
from the state. The Aryan race will expel the alien races from
its soil. All Nordic racial types will return to the fold. The new
world of Germanic design will reshape the future city and town.
A new Nordic Christianity will return to the message of the
Nordic Jesus, and repudiate the Pauline doctrines that made
Christ’s message into a new form of Judaism.
 Art and Politics

Next to religion, art is the highest embodiment of the

Volk spirit. Art is a product of race. Rosenberg spent
considerable space in the Myth of the Twentieth Century
discussing his aesthetic theories as well as his ideas of good,
degenerate and political art forms. He also took up the theme
in earnest in Revolution in der bildenden Kunst? (1934) and, to
a slightly lesser degree, in Tradition und Gegenwart: Blut und
Ehre TV (1943) and Gestaltung der Idee: Blut und Ehre II (1936).
Good art is that which shows the true nature and the
racial essence of the Nordic people. Degenerate art depicts
racial bastardization and seeks to ennoble alien peoples.
Degenerate art also included the "modern" forms of
expressionism, cubism and surrealism. Political art ennobles the
state and its ideology. Degenerate political art would tend to
denigrate the political forms that a noble people has created for
itself.
One great difference between Rosenberg’s right wing of
the National Socialist party and Gobbels’ left wing can be found
in their respective philosophies of aesthetics. In his editorial,
"Revolution in der bildenden Kunst," in Volkische Beobachter
[July 6 and July 17, 1933] and reprinted in a collection of ,
Rosenberg’s speeches, editorials and essays, he argued his
position that art is an expression of the racial soul. He
denounced Gobbels as an advocate of modernism, especially
expressionism. Hitler sided with Rosenberg strongly on this
matter. Rosenberg especially liked volkish themes in art while
Gobbels had no use for these relics of the past in art or in any
other field. Gobbels saw expressionism as a voice of revolution
and as the logical and correct product of intellectual naturalism.
He thought that only a movement as thoroughly unconventional
as artistic expressionism was consistent with National
Socialism’s philosophy and character. Rosenberg saw
expressionism as too radical. It was undisciplined and could
226 Alfred Rosenberg

never accept the mission of all artistic expression: the

strengthening of the state and the awakening of the racial soul
of the Volk. It was inconsistent with the aims of National
Socialism, It was an unhealthy movement that was best tied to
degenerate bourgeois plutocracy and marxism.

Art in Classical Antiquity

The Greeks, in their classical, racially pure period

showed a remarkable ability to make ideal forms concrete in all
of their art forms, including sculpture, painting, sketching and
poetry. Their pure racial spirit was captured in epics like the
Odyssey and the Iliad. The statues of their gods glorified ideal
human forms. Such beauty is indeed "a joy forever." Its
character transcends the ages. A Nordic archaeologist who
discovers a classical Greek sculpture finds that the true Nordic
character is unchanging. He feels a kinship with the figure and
with the artist who created it. Conversely, the repugnant realism
of the later period shows racial decline and miscegenation. Its
ugliness again transcends the ages and is as revolting to the
German today as it must have been to the Nordic Greek 2300
years ago.
Rosenberg described the degenerate art of Greece in
much the same way he described the Jew in art. Both
resembled demons because both were the products of racial
bastardization. He spoke of the heads as being "... round and
fat, the forehead swollen the proportions of a hydrocephalic, the
nose short and bulbous, the lips protruding." The classical
Nordic Greeks who remained after alien populations from
Hither Asia had become predominate noted this decline, but
were powerless to stem the tide in politics, art, or history. These
Nordics disliked the portraits of "hairy men with long beards .
. . (and whose) profiles show fleshy thick necks." They found
the new figures to be "animalistic, idiotic caricatures."
 Art and Politics 227

From this brief look at Greek art we can conclude

certain general principles about art. Good art is always the
expression of the organic racial soul. It has a timelessness that
captures the hearts of all generations of the pure race. It is a
collective feeling, resisting any form of atomization of society.
It offers solace to the members of the race in their individual
or collective grief. It gives them a racial standard of true
physical beauty. It embodies many values in its essence,
including the good, the true, the just, the harmonious and the
symmetrical. It is designed to put the individual at rest. It must
not cause him to become emotional, irrational or upset. It
draws upon the ancient racial soul, awakening it, without
loosing the base appetites. It is not only timeless; it also
transcends time itself. One who enjoys the aesthetic experience
loses trace of time, place and distance. He is drawn into its
greater meaning, its message. The lessons it teaches and the
meanings it conveys are fundamentally the same for all
members of the race. It does not attempt to convey messages to
alien and unrelated races.
True art shows the racial beauty of its people. It gives
them a racial standard of true physical beauty. Nordic ideals of
beauty require that the subject be well-proportioned, with long
slender limbs and slender torsos. When hair color is shown it
will be blonde or light brown. Noses and lips arc medium to
small size. Eyes will be blue when colored, and show a vivid,
lively and intelligent look. [A/yt/j, pp. 4-5 and 290-91],

Unaesthetic Art

• Art in other nations will show the racial characteristics

of the indigenous population. African art will tend to show a
black ideal with wooly black hair, thick and enormous lips, and
narrow head. African art will tend to show primitive body
decorations and distortions of the parts of the body which
228 Alfred Rosenberg

natives of various tribes induce because of their unusual, albeit

bizarre, ideas on bodily improvement. Asian art will show the
slanted eyes and jet black hair and yellowish skin tones and
similar racial attributes.
The Jew will appear with his unusual racial
characteristics. He will have the oversized hooked nose, the
wooly hair with waves or kinks, the yellow-orange skin tone and
short torso with elongated arms. He will have a conniving and
untrustworthy look, showing his devious character. Ordinarily,
he will be bearded and dressed in his racial garb. Rosenberg
had no objection to depicting the Jew as he is, in the usual
stylized manner of Western art. Indeed, it would be quite
improper to show him with Aryan racial characteristics.
Rosenberg’s objection is to the inclusion of Jews in
Western art forms except as an object of scorn. He excoriated
those Nordic artists who showed Western heroes with Jewish
racial features. He also objected to the painting and sculpture
of Jews with Aryan racial features. Rosenberg would have
heroic figures always presented with Nordic physical
characteristics. Evil figures, such as blacks or Jews, preferably
the latter, would be offered with a full complement of their
racial characteristics. When Old Testament figures were heroic,
as rarely occurred, they might be shown with Aryan features,
for, if they were truly heroic, they must have been Aryans.
Deceitful, lying, cheating Jews from the Old Testament were to
be depicted with Jewish racial features.
Rosenberg found many of these "bastard" types to have
"hairy-negroid Eastern racial type" appearances making them
"short, stunted, animalistic demons." He found like figures in
the paintings of Rembrandt who was a "good Biblical scholar"
who followed Jacob Katz’ Dutch Folk book, Trouringh, and
depicted Old Testament figures with Jewish-Asiatic-Negro
features. Rembrandt generally pleased Rosenberg because the
heroic subjects of much of his art were Nordic. He pleased
 Art and Politics 229
Rosenberg in part because he painted evil Biblical figures as
racial Jews. Perhaps he was the product of confusion that is
typical of those who were influenced simultaneously by the
Nordic racial heritage that they knew in their souls and felt in
the recesses of their minds, while, on the other hand, being
influenced by degenerate, racially mixed Italian artists and
Jewish-Roman Christian ideas. Rembrandt depicted his mother
in a portrait that now hangs in Petrograd as a German and his
Diana (also in St. Petersburg) has strongly marked Nordic
features. There is a marked irony to this painting because the
Jewish figures are caught on canvas in the midst of a lie. Joseph
is shown gesturing with one hand, protesting his innocence after
being caught in an evil act by the husband of Potiphar. Later
Biblical paintings Rembrandt executed such as The Lost Son
gave Aryan characterizations to Old Testament figures. Even
in The Jewish Bride Rembrandt gave the central figure "a course
but tender Nordic feeling." His Christ in Emmaus has Nordic,
not Jewish, features.
Rosenberg suggested three explanations for Rembrandt’s
(and other artists’) choice of Jewish figures in religious
paintings of Old Testament (and other Hebrew-theme
paintings). First, there was the Jewish-Roman-Christian
influence, noted above. Second, many of the artists, including
Rembrandt, struggled early on in their careers financially and
were forced to live in Jewish ghetto areas where they became
friendly with Jews and where they had readily available Jewish
models. When they left the ghettoes they rejected the Jews
whom they had known and they found Nordic figures for
models. Third, they came, in maturity, to realize that the Jewish
figures were incompatible with the culture of their age and
location. Wealthy patrons were Gentile and were unwilling to
pay for Jewish figures unless they were objects of ridicule or
scorn. Mature, true artistry seeks to fulfill the kb/fc-spirit of the
people and using Jewish models just did not fit. Rembrandt and
230 Alfred Rosenberg

others may have felt, early in their careers, that realism was
desirable, but, later, they returned to Nordic racial types who
were familiar in their own experiences. Fulfillment of Volk
needs and spirit took precedence over realism.
Rosenberg claimed to be the first to have discovered the
first, most important and indispensable precondition for i
proper aesthetics: race and the needs of the nation-state. Since
a true aesthetic philosophy had not been written one must
assume that artists who had created their great works
embodying racial types must have done so unconsciously, that
is, without the benefit of the directive force of true
philosophical aesthetics. They had come, because of the deep
call of racial ethics, to know that true aesthetics requires a
distinct racial relationship if it is to be accepted by the potential
audience. No great artist could present to a Nordic audience a
work of art that adequately depicted the majesty of God, his
strength and glory, while using a Jewish model. Ideals of beauty,
harmony, symmetry, duty and honor required that the model to
be used was capable of such virtues. That meant that the
audience demanded that the accomplished artist had to use a
Nordic ideal.
Rosenberg discusses this in depth. The God that
Michelangelo used to awaken Adam appeared as a Nordic type
(German: Typos'). That master even used the same head, albeit
with a few changes, for the Hebrew patriarch Moses. Dutch as
well as German and Italian-Nordic painters saw that it was
possible io project the grandeur of God and the Old Testament
only if they employed the Nordic model. Rosenberg had great
admiration for Jan van Eyck, noting his type-forming strength
in using Nordic types for all his paintings. Again and again, van
Eyck reiterated the common representation of Nordic racial
beauty. Other artists imitated, often with greater artistic ability,
van Eyck’s types. His work showed the clearest racial forms.'
 Art and Politics 231
In contrast, Rosenberg noted; no artist and no German
or Northern European audience could ever comprehend the
positive values should these have been cast in the Jewish racial
mold. One could not visualize a god worthy of worship in
Nordic nations with a Jewish face or body. Such a rejection of
an externalized Jewish Qbd tells.us why we must reject the
internalization of the Hebrew Jehovah. Ilie type-forming work
of artists of Nordic descent prepared the way for the work of
Nordic type-forming prophets of an Aryan Christianity.
There are three highly desirable subjects for
Nordic racial art: important Nordic-Christian figures, God and
great German-Nordic heroes. Not every art work need be tied
to a religious theme. [Myth, p.319]. Some of the religious works,
such as those discussed above by Michelangelo and van Eyck
are quite suitable and might be used to engender devotion to
a Nordic Christ. Many paintings and many sculptured works
depicting such heroic figures as Frederick the Great and Karl
I (or Charlemagne) already existed throughout Germany. The
state would also commission other works. As Minister of culture
Rosenberg used state funds to encourage artists to sculpt and
paint such works.
There might be a place for "pop art" because of its
consequent propaganda value. In -fascist Italy the state
sponsored annual contests and gave political themes for aspiring
artists to fulfill. Some of the themes the state chose were: the
impact of one of II Duce’s speeches on an audience; Mussolini
himself; and fascist rallies. Rosenberg never discussed such
mundane art forms, concentrating on high art.
Rosenberg was more interested in using art to awaken
long forgotten feelings of Volk spirit than in any other use of
art. Art was to demonstrate in a very practical way what
German racial types looked like and what its racial ideals were.
By charging the nation with such PbZk-oriented energies
Rosenberg hoped to make the nation more interested in
232 Alfred Rosenberg

national politics and national religion. Art was only to a small

degree a thing in itself. It was of much greater interest what
could be made of it and how it affected men.
Rosenberg thought that one of his most significant
contributions lay in his discovery that art is the embodied will
of the people. His great contribution to aesthetics lay in his
insistence that art never has its impact in a vacuum. Art will do
something to the mind and spirit, but the question is, what will
that be? Its impact might be for good or for evil. It might be
to turn men away from politics or it might serve to support the
state and its racial-national ideology. Rosenberg thought of the
state’s role as directing art so that it simultaneously inspired
men to accept racial types, act freely in spirit as they soared
toward god, act in a racially and nationally conscious way to
keep their race pure, and to resist alien and foreign influences.

A Typology of Artists

Rosenberg created a simple typology of Nordic artists.

The first type-forming personality was the one who wished to
master all knowledge so that he could attack truth from all
sides. Such a figure would encircle truth like one surrounding
a fortress. He would seek to subdue the unknown through a
universal, world-embracing strategy. Nothing would escape his
attention. He would prepare a broad strategy. He would use all
his forces, attacking first here, then there, then at another point,
always seeking to use the tool that penetrates secrets best, but
never afraid to try any and all weapons in his arsenal.
Rosenberg named the following persons as examples of this
type: Leonardo DaVinci, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Goethe.
The second type is less universalist in his outlook. He
would not share in the broad striving and exploration of the
first. He would approach being from only one perspective,
attacking problems with a single assault. That single storming
 Art and Politics 233
of the fortress would require the expenditure of large amounts
of energy. This type would assume that there is a vital essence
which he must expose, so he would stop at nothing to
accomplish his aim. Rosenberg suggested poetically that this
type of man "grasps" Fate by the throat." He prefers direct
action and makes no attempt to conceal his strategy. This man’s
strength is in his opinions. These are essentially a moral powers.
Rosenberg identified some examples of this second type:
Michelangelo, Richard Wagner, Schopenhauer and Beethoven.
Rosenberg found the impatient, forceful, one-
dimensional genius of the second type to be out of step with his
own time. This was a time of destruction of old values along
many lines and the replacement of these traditional values with
new ones. The strategic method of the first type which looks for
targets of opportunity, places of weakness and strategies of
reason was more in step with national socialist needs in the first
part of the twentieth century. After the struggles for power and
change were completed there would be room for each
personality type.
The creative intuition that leads the painter and sculptor
also directs the composer of great music to give of his soul.
Rosenberg noted two composers with greatest interest:
Beethoven and Wagner. Beethoven "subdues and captivates the
heart" by showing his music the "whole world in ferment" and
"the willful, the titanic." He "grasped the being which lives in
our moment (and) ... embodies this to the highest degree
possible." Beethoven "dashes" over a desolate and "ruined"
world making the bits and pieces of shattered hopes and dreams
into the building blocks of a new will-shaped world. His heroic
music inspired heroes to perform great deeds for the
Fatherland. His music in the Third, Fifth and Ninth
symphonies provides a heroic background suitable for bringing
all Germans to their racial fulfillment.
234 Alfred Rosenberg

Wagner’s genius was of a different order. To many of the

pre-National Socialist German political philosophers he is the
epitome of musical composers. He was the greatest of the
German poets. Wagner was a Nietzsche’s superman who-
created a whole new pattern of musical expression: the music­
drama with a Volk base. He combined music, dance and drama
into a whole new lyrical expression, the likes of which the world
had never seen before. Beethoven had suggested a portion of
this possibility by combining great music with the sounds of
human voices singing Volk songs in his Ninth Symphony which
used Schiller’s Nordic "Hymn to Joy." This great composition
had no movement and no dramatic qualities. Oratorios and
operas (including Fidelio by Beethoven) had existed before
Wagner, but had little dramatic and almost no Volk base. The
spoken portion (librettos) had been composed by some poet
and the composer contributed just the music.
Never before Richard Wagner had there been anything
like the Ring of, the Nibelungen. In contained all of the vital
elements of the music-drama. Comprised of four long operas,
each a masterpiece, the Ring cycle retold the Nordic Volk story
of creation. It had everything one could ask for. There was
action, as when Siegfried killed the dragon. There was
adventure when Seigfried left his Bride Brunhilde to visit an
alien castle down the Rhine River. There were many tales of
heroism and duty and obligation, especially surrounding the
Walsungs, children of Wotan the Wanderer. It extolled all the
Nordic virtues and had no objectionable features or characters,
save for those who were intentionally shown as the loathsome
enemy.
Each of the several arts Wagner had combined had been
pushed to the limits of creativity and productivity heretofore.
Wagner had had the type-forming racial strength to transcend
these limitations, thereby creating an entirely new pattern of
existence. He overcame the sterility of his times and the self­
 Art and Politics 235
imposed limitations of his contemporaries. The music by itself
was hollow, not permitting new type-forming beyond that
accomplished by Beethoven.
Dance had been prostituted, removing it from its natural
base, the Volk. Dancing had always been associated with the
peasants, but in recent years this connection had been broken
and their contribution had been forgotten or ignored. Free form
dancing was introduced. Therein there was no spirit and no tie
to the Volk. It was neither dance nor artistic expression for it
lacked soul and substance.
Drama had been used to convey Volk themes for years,
and it still had possibilities. Left to itself, drama was dry and
could use uplifting. Many of these plays prostituted completely
the lyrical art which they might have embodied. Some plays,
and the number of these was ever increasing, were self-enclosed
tragedies which could never be played meaningfully. Authors
forgot that their spare and stylized prose allows a reader to
attach more meaning to the words than actually meets the eye.
This does not always translate well to stage productions.
Wagner had fought successfully against such a
conventional and vulgarized world. He conquered it by force of
his will with his Volk-based productions. To Rosenberg, the
achievements of Bayreuth "will stand for eternity." The word-
and-tone drama, the union of the three arts, was an
achievement that only the truly superior man could bring about.
Dance returned to German racial nationals. It was tied to folk
music and peasant songs. It was no longer a cacophony of
unnatural leg, arm and body movements without relation to the
rhythm and without form. This union offered a new dimension
of the Aryan mystique.
The world of art is completely different since Wagner.
He stands as the standard against which all future art will be
measured. His type-forming power will inspire others to follow
his artistic example. Moreover, his music-drama will help to
236 Alfred Rosenberg

form the religion and ethics of the state. His art does precisely
what political art of the value positive type is supposed to do:
inspire actions in others.
Wagner did not represent an artistic dead end. His work
remained incomplete in Rosenberg’s opinion. His was one of
the few criticisms of Wagner published in the National Socialist
period. Rosenberg pointed out what a new kind of "poetic
license" had been given to Wagner. When great scenes demand
immediate action, frequently the participants must stand rigidly
while some long aria is sung. While the audience will naturally
direct its attention at the singer, nevertheless there is a lull in
there action at precisely the wrong moment. It is most
unnatural for one who is about to strike a blow at his enemy to
stand, singing about it for several minutes. Admittedly, there
are many examples of that sort of thing. A new type-forming
personality might find ways to combine several arts in such a
way as to be able to allow the motion to continue unabated
while expressing the moment in joyous and heroic song.
Rosenberg does not say how this can be done, merely that it is
a worthy goal.
Rosenberg uncovered yet another facet of Wagner. His
critique of the great composer concludes that Wagner knew the
Nordic soul better than any other artist. Wagner knew that the
German soul is not contemplative and that it does not become
lost in an individualistic, atomistic psychology. It wills to know
cosmic and universal spiritual laws and it is architecturally
constituted. Wagner embodied each of three major factors
which constitute Nordic collective aesthetic life: the Nordic
ideal of beauty; the inner strength of the heroic Nordic will,
and; the Nordic supreme value of honor along with the
associated values of truthfulness, duty and obligation and
courage. Additionally, Wagner offers caricatures of the racially
degenerated, bastardized races who represent Germany’s
enemies.
 Art and Politics 237
National Socialism staged Wagnerian festivals
periodically, usually at least once a year at the great opera
house that the master himself had designed at Bayreuth. These
productions were elaborate to say the least for they required a
highly elaborate revolving stage. Even with such a stage as
Wagner had designed the settings were still quite static and
artificial. Wagner had recognized these limitations. The cinema
was still in the future when Bayreuth was designed. The moving
picture provided an outlet for greater creativity than even
Bayreuth provided. It is surprising that, given the interest Hitler
and Rosenberg had in Wagnerian opera, no large scale motion
picture of the Ring Cycle was made during the Third Reich.
Such a production might have provided remedies for many of
the problems Rosenberg discussed.

Motion Pictures as Art Forms

Rosenberg was acutely aware of the motion picture as an

an form. He deplored what he saw as the Jewish domination of
the film industry. But he saw that, like the legitimate stage, the
film industry could be made to serve the Volk spirit. The
movies, still in the early stages of development when Rosenberg
wrote his Myth of the Twentieth Century, were to play a great
role in the National Socialist state. Perhaps the greatest
documentary film ever made, Triumph of the Will, was and is a
masterpiece. In the last days of the TTrird Reich Goebbels,
Rosenberg’s philosophical and ideology rival, spent millions of
Reich marks on a film on Frederick the Great. In the time
between the manufacture of these two films, the National
Socialist state produced literally dozens of films depicting either
Volk themes or the depravity of alien races, notably the Jews.
Many anti-semitic novels like Sweet Jew (Jud Suss] were filmed
and distributed widely. Likewise, the state used films to buoy up
the war effort in the last years of fighting. Many of these final
238 Alfred Rosenberg

films developed the Nietzschean theme that Germany was the

last remaining unbastardized protector of the Nordic race and
of Western civilization.
Rosenberg’s hatred of plutocracy and industrialized
society generally led to the conclusion that art should be
essentially preindustrial in outlook. Rosenberg infinitely
preferred rural life to the urban concentrations that he equated
with the general corruption of civilization and all forms of
human degradation. He associated prostitution and
homosexuality with urbanization. Such depravities stood in stark
contrast to the healthy rural life that medieval peasants had led
before the peasants had been forced or lured from their farms.
Films made under Rosenberg’s direction inevitably pointed back
to a better, happier more simplified life style. The peasant
customs and costumes and pageants that Rosenberg loved
dearly were rural, not urban, and many of these were captured
on film as short subjects that could be shown in theatres across
the nation. He designed these films to have a type-forming
effect on the Germans.
Rosenberg had suggested that one of the first fronts to
be opened against Jewish control of German artistic life should
be waged in the areas of the film and the legitimate stage. He
proposed that the state should create an Aryan theatre in which
only Nordic types could perform plays and dramas. All plays
staged therein had to be of German origin. Jews would be
barred from acting, directing, writing and all other roles. The
state would support this stage by creating of a German racial
trade union of actors and actresses. In the Myth he lamented
the initial failures of both of these ideas, but he felt that the
aims would still be accomplished as racial Germans became
conscious of the importance of preserving their Volk heritage.
Rosenberg’s interest in the film industry and his staunch
support for Wagner’s revolutionary, superman-producing music­
drama showed that his aesthetics was hardly conventional or
 Art and Politics 239
conservative. He was reactionary in his attacks on city life and
urban lifestyles. He was hardly progressive in his views on sex,
prostitution and homosexuality. His emphasis on medieval
pageants and all that went with them was quite reactionary.
Rosenberg was progressive and adventuresome in his
willingness to accept new media for the presentation of old,
racially based ideas.

Art and Race

Rosenberg was anti-modem in the sense that he rejected

the emerging schools of modern art. After National Socialism
came to power they used the state to curb the creation and
display of degenerate art. Impure forms of expression included
nearly all the major schools of the present century. Art was to
depict racially-linked themes in an idealized manner. It was to
convey values. It was never "value free." It was not pacifist or
internationalist or universalist. It did not include the surrealist
school or cubism or expressionism. Because the Nordic soul was
not contemplative, art was not to become a vehicle to
encourage men to liberate their minds so that they flew on
alien trips into hostile, racially impure worlds. The duty of the
state in aesthetics was to remove degenerate work that was on
occasion a sin for Nordic peoples. The state was to suppress
those things that were evil and corrupted in and of themselves
when measured against the needs of the Volk.
The true artist has received a great gift. It is, in reality,
the product of the collective race and its consequent racial soul.
The artist must share his gift with his people. He must not
prostitute his work. That would be nothing less than betrayal of
the race. In the final analysis his is a great debt to his race. He
can uplift and direct their souls toward racial values and
spiritual freedom if he chooses to serve his fellows. This is not
a charitable obligation; it is the fulfillment of his racial honor.
240 Alfred Rosenberg

The artists of the nineteenth century failed to produce

Volk art in sufficient quantity to overcome the disruptive power
of degenerate art. The sin of the nineteenth century was that
few artists felt duty and honor bound to create for the race
those aesthetic values it cried out to receive. For every Wagner
there was a Mendelssohn. For every Beethoven there was
Mahler. German conductors and art critics praised the works of
Jews while ignoring much of the racial art of Nordics.
Increasing race consciousness would serve to right this matter.
Popular culture emphasized African jungle-beat music.
In some countries white performers gave legitimacy to jazz and
other African music forms. These art forms had their place as
expressions of the vivid imagination of the black race. Such
noises had no place in Aryan nations. They took the place of
Nordic racial folk and classical music.
Chinese art forms had become the rage in many of the
better homes of Western Europe and America. Chinese art
reveals a great creative soul, but it is a form suitable for
Oriental, not Nordic peoples. Two things happen when Western
men concentrate on such alien art forms. First, they become
frustrated for they can never understand the art fully because
they are related to an entirely different soul.
Second, the individual becomes aesthetically a man
without a country. While one cannot comprehend the alien art,
neither can he continue to relate to his own cultural patterns
and art forms. He loses one world without being able to join
the other.
What Rosenberg wrote of Chinese art and culture
applied to the archaeological studies of the art and cultures of
other nations. Jews might be able to dig up Semitic civilizations
with profit, but there is none to be had for racial Germans.
They can relate somewhat better, but still not fully, to Greek
and Roman ruins, especially those related to the pre-invasion
 Art and Politics 241
periods. While these peoples had some Nordic relations, they
are not truly pre-Germanic cultures.
Rosenberg had emphasized the need for greater
archaeological work in pre-German civilizations. He thought
that scientific study of early Aryan civilization might aid in the
development of a high form of Nordic Christianity.
Archaeological discoveries of past Aryan civilizations might also
help reawaken and recover the Nordic racial soul.
Rosenberg urged that more work be done on extant
manuscripts of the early Nordic civilizations. Much more work
was needed in the comparative study of languages of the
various Nordic cultures. Aryan signs and symbols had influenced
Roman-Jewish Christianity as we have seen above. Much more
work was needed in the study of all art forms and cultural
patterns. These tasks Rosenberg thought to be much more
productive for Nordic scientists and scholars.
Rosenberg wanted to bring all powers of the mind to
bear on the creation, discovery and preservation of realistic
Nordic race-linked art. Art is, next to religion, the highest
activity of man. Like his religion a man’s art has to serve the
type-formation the newly emerging racially-oriented state
needed. Art contributes to the culture (Kultur) of the Volk', it
completes it, honing it to a high state of perfection. It expresses
the ideals of the race and the highest values of the race.

Bibliography

Brenner, Hildegard. Die Kunstpolitik des Nationalsozialismus. Hamburg, 1963.

______ . ’Die Kunst im politischen Machtkampf 1933/34" 10 Vierteljahrsshcftc
fur Zeitgeschichte 1 (January 1962), pp.17-42.
Hinz, Berthold. Art in the Third Reich, trans. by Robert and Rita Kimber. New
York, 1979.
Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmuth. Art under a Dictatorship. Oxford, 1954.
Mosse, George L. Nazi Culture: Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the
Third Reich. New York, 1966.
242 Alfred Rosenberg
 Bibliography

The Works of Alfred Rosenberg in chronological order

1920

Unmoral im Talmud. This volume discusses anti-Christian ideas

in Jewish Talmud. Many of its themes were repeated in The
Myth of the Twentieth Century and in other works.

Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten. One of Rosenberg’s

principal attacks on Jews, the book traces the "tracks" of the
Jew in the world.

1921

Der Staatsfeindliche Zionismus. One of several of Rosenberg’s

expositions of the Zionist conspiracy.

Translation of Gougenot des Mousseaux, LeJuif. The German

edition was entitled, Der Jude, das Judentum und die Verjudung
der christlichen Volker. The ideas that Mousseaux set forth were
quite acceptable to Rosenberg who considered them of
importance and nearly equal in value and impact to the ideas
of Arthur, Count de Gobineau.

Die Totengraber Russlands. Rosenberg denounced the Jews as

the leaders of Russian communism who will destroy that nation.

1922

Pest in Russland: Der Bolsvhevismus, seine Haupter, Handldnger

und Opfer. This book was yet another discussion of Jewish
control of Russian communism’s Jewish roots.
244 Alfred Rosenberg

1923

Die Protokollen der Weisen von Zion. This is the most important
and best and most widely known work on the Jewish conspiracy.
Rosenberg edited this, the first German edition and provided
an introductory essay.

Wesen, Grundsatze und Ziele der N.S.D.A.P. This is a

commentary on, and elaboration of, the "25 points" that Anton
Drexler drew up as the basis of the Nazi Party. After the
National Socialists came to power it became the official
interpretation of the party program.

1924

Bdrse und Marxismus oder der Herr und der Knecht. In this work
Rosenberg explored the relationship between plutocracy and
communism.

Der Volkische Staatsgedanke: Uberlieferung und Neugeburt.

1925
Die Internationale Hochfinanz als Herrin der Arbeiterbewegung in
alien Landern. This was an attack on Jewish controlled finance,
the principal ideas of which were originally stated in Die Spur
des Juden....

1927

Houston Stewart Chamberland als Verkiinderund Begriinder einer

deutschen Zukunft. This was a more elaborate version of an
earlier, shorter tribute to Rosenberg’s spiritual mentor. Most of
this text later appeared in the Myth of the Twentieth Century.
 Bibliography 245

Verbrechen der Freimauerei. This was one of several attacks

Rosenberg wrote on the conspiracy of the Freemasons and of
their cooperation with the Jews.

Der Weltverschwbrerkongress zu Basel. This was a discussion of

the origins of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. It
argued that these papers were drawn up at the First Zionist
Congress at Basel, Switzerland in 1896.

Der Zukunftsweg einer deutschen Aussenpolitik. This work sets

expounds the idea that expanded living space in Europe and the
depopulation of areas in Eastern Central Europe were the
necessary cornerstones of future German foreign policy. He
advocated Dr. General Karl Haushofer’s idea of German
Lebensraurn. Many parts of this book were admitted as evidence
against Rosenberg in the post war trial of "war crimes" at
Nurnberg.

Dreissig Novemberkbpfe. This was an attack on the Weimar

Republic.

1928

Dietrich Echart, ein Venndchtnis. Dietrich Eckhardt died in 1923

and Rosenberg edited this collection of his works in tribute to
one of his principal mentors. He also wrote a very flattering
introduction to Eckhardt’s essays, designed to be a tribute to
one of the major influences on National Socialism.

Der Sumpf: Querschnitte durch das "Geistes" Leben der

November-Demokratie. This was an attack on the Weimar
Republic that compared it to a swamp because it was a place
of disintegration and decomposition.
246 Alfred Rosenberg

1930

Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. This is Rosenberg’s magna

opus. It incorporated many ideas from his earlier books and
essays.

1931

Der Fall Ludendorff. General Lundendorff had marched with

the Nazis in the ill-fated beer hall Putsch and this is
Rosenberg’s tribute to him as a companion in arms. Rosenberg
took this opportunity to compliment and extol the merits of
National Socialist philosophy by referring to this national hero
who had been a supporter.

1932

Jaden turn, Jesuitismus, Deutsches Christentum. This was

Rosenberg’s attack on the Jesuit order of Roman Catholic
priests and their theology. He reluctantly admitted admiration
for their organizational abilities. The book offered a
comparison of Jesuits with the Jews.

Das Wesensgejuge des Nationalsozialismus: Grundlagen deutscher

Wiedergeburt. Rosenberg argued that a renaissance of German
culture could come only through Nazi leadership.

1933

Die Entwicklung der deutschen Freiheitsbewegung. Rosenberg

here argued that German freedom can be ensured only through
National Socialist leadership.
 Bibliography 247

1934

Der deutsche Ordensstaaf: Ein neuerAbschnitt in der Entwicklung

des Nationalsozialistischen Staatsgedankens. This is a reprint of
a speech of 27 April 1934. He argued that National Socialists
must have sufficient power to achieve their goals.

Krisis und Neubau Europas. Rosenberg here argued that the

rebirth of Germany will bring about the salvation of all Europe.
He disputed this thesis in other works.

Neugeburt Europas als werdende Geschichte. Much the same as

Krisis und Neubau Europas, above, this essay linked Europe’s
renaissance to the rebirth of German Volkgeist.

Protestantische Rompilger: Der Verrat an Luther und der Mythus

des 20. Jahrhunderts. This was Rosenberg’s response to
Protestant attacks on the Myth of the Twentieth Century. It was
similar to An die Dunkebniinner unserer Zeit, the response to
Catholics.

Weltanschauung und Wissenschaft. This is a general statement

of Rosenberg’s political philosophy.

Meister Eckehart’s Religion. This was a reprint of portions of the

Myth of Twentieth Century that discussed the theology of with
the medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart.

Revolution in der bildenden Kunst? This was a commentary on

the arts and parallels themes developed in The Myth of the
Twentieth Century.
248 Alfred Rosenberg

1935

An die Dunkelmdnner unserer Zeit: Eine Antwort aufdie Angriffe

gegen den Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. This was principal of
Rosenberg’s several responses to Catholic attacks on the Myth
of the Twentieth Century. It contained many of the same
arguments found in Protestantische Rompilger, his response to
Protestant attacks.

Blut und Ehre, ein Kampf fur deutsche Wiedergeburg, Reden und
Aufsatze von 1919-1933. This was another collection of
Rosenberg’s speeches and contained little that had been not
been offered in other works.

Der Bolschewistnus als Aktion einer fremden Rasse. This was

another attack on communism as a part of the International
Communist Conspiracy.

1936

Gestaltung der Idee, Blut und Ehre II. Band, Reden und Aufsatze
von 1933-35. This was yet another collection of speeches which
extolled the National Socialist philosophy.

1938

Europa und sein Todfeind; vier Reden liber das bolschewistische

Problem. This booklet was a collection of four speeches
Rosenberg made against Soviet communism. The essays repeat
the accusations of earlier works, that communism is a part of
the International Jewish Conspiracy.
 Bibliography 249

Kampf um die Macht, Blut und Ehre HI. Band, Aufsatze von
1921-1932. This was a collection of essays, largely from the
newspaper, Volkischer Beobachter.

Autoritdt und Freiheit: Vortrag auf dem Kongress des

Reichsparteitages 1938 dec Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen
Arbeiterpartei. This booklet contains speeches given to the
N.S.D.A.P. party faithful on the mission of the Third Reich.

1939

Novemberkopfe. This book was an attack on the Social

Democrats. It denounced them for their role in corrupting
German values in the Weimar Republic.

Mussen weltanschauliche Kampfe staatliche Feindschaften

ergeben? This essay is available in translation as "Are
Ideological Struggles Bound to lead to International Enmity?"
[Berlin: Muller, 1939],

Neugeburt Europas als werdende Geschichte. The ideas expressed

are similar to Mussen weltanschauliche Kampfe staatliche
Feindschaften ergeben?, above.

Weltanschauung und Glaubenslehre.

1940

Der gestchichtliche Sinn unseres Kampfes; Rede von Reichsleiter

Rosenberg vor Soldalen der Westfront, 16 April 1940. This was a
late war propaganda piece designed to improve morale in war-
torn Germany.
250 Alfred Rosenberg

1941

Das Parteiprogranun: Wesen, Grundsatze und Zieleder N.S.D.A.P,

This was a commentary on the National Socialist party program.

1943

Tradition unde Gegenwart: Blut under Ehre, TV. This was yet
another collection of Rosenberg’s speeches concerning National
Socialist philosophy and the war effort.

Der Weltkampf und die Weltrevolution unserer Zeit. This was

another exposition of National Socialist political theory.

1944

Deutsch und Europdische Geistesfreiheit. Jn this, one of

Rosenberg’s last works, he explored the relationship between
Germany and Europe.

Friedrich Nietzsche. This was a speech Rosenberg made on the

occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the philosopher’s
birth. This was the last work published before Rosenberg’s
death.

Works published posthumously

Letzte Aufzeichnungen; Ideale und Idole der

nationalsozialistischen Revolution. Translated by Eric Posselt as
Memoirs of Alfred Rosenberg (Chicago, 1949). It was written
while Rosenberg was awaiting execution.
 Bibliography 251

Portrait eines Menschenverbrechers nach den hinterlassen

Memoiren des ehemaligen Reichministers Alfred Rosenbergs.
edited by Serge Lang and Ernst von Schenck. St. Gallen, 1947.
These writings are said by the editors to be Rosenberg’s
memoirs.

Politisches Tagebuch aus den Jahren 1934-35 und 1939-40.

Edited by H.G. Seraphim. This volume contains what the editor
claimed were Rosenberg’s diaries for the years indicated.
Whether more diaries exist is unknown.

H. Haertle (ed.). Grossdeutschlands, Traum und Tragbdie:

Rosenbergs Kritik am Hitlerismus. Munich: 2d ed., 1970.

English Sources

George Mosse (ed.). Nazi Culture. (New York, 1966). This book
has several items, including an essay on women and "The Earth
Centered Jew'Has No Soul."

Robert Pois (ed). Race and Race History and Other Essays by
Alfred Rosenberg. (New York, 1974). The editor has translated
163 pages from the Myth of the Twentieth Century and other
sources.

(ed.). Selected Writings of Alfred Rosenberg. London,

1970.

Charles A. Beard (ed. and intro.). Mythus I: The Worship of

Race. London, 1936.

‘ (ed. and intro.). Mythus If: The Character of the New

Religion. London, 1936.
252 Alfred Rosenberg

Josiah C. Wedgwood (ed. and intro.). Mythus III: International

Implications of the New Religion. London, 1937.

Letzte Aufzeichnungen. Gottingen, 1955.

Secondary Sources

Bollmus, Reinhard. Das Amt Rosenberg und seine Gegner zum

Machtkampf in nationalsozialistischen Herrschaftssystem.
Stuttgart, 1970.

Cecil, Robert. The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg

and Nazi Ideology. London, 1972.

Fest, Joachim. The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi
Leadership. New York, 1970.

Field, Geoffrey. Evangelist of Race: The Germanic Vision of

Stewart Houston Chamberlain. Columbia University, 1981.

Hart, Franz. Alfred Rosenberg: Der Mann und sein Werk.

Munich, 1935.

Jacobson, Hans-Ado If et al World War II Policy arid Strategy:

Selected Documents with Commentary. Oxford, 1979.

Nova, Fritz. Alfred Rosenberg. New York, 1986.

Rothfelder, Herbert P. "A Study of Rosenberg’s Organization

for National Socialist Ideology." Ph.D. dissertation, University .
of Michigan, 1963.